8/10/15: Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here

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Adam Butcher, Alexander Conti, alpha males, Andre Chemetoff, Arnold Pinnock, Balmorhea, Bryan Murphy, bullies, Canadian films, cinema, co-writers, correctional officers, Dewshane Williams, Dog Pound, drama, emotional abuse, English-language debut, father-son relationships, film reviews, films, first-time actors, guard-prisoner relationships, hunger strike, independent films, indie dramas, inmates, Jane Wheeler, Jeff McEnery, Jeremie Delon, juvenile detention facility, juvenile offenders, K'Naan, Kim Chapiron, Lawrence Bayne, Lynne Adams, male friendships, Mateo Morales, mental abuse, Michael Morang, mother-son relationships, Movies, multiple writers, Nikkfurie, non-professional actors, pecking order, physical abuse, power dynamics, power struggles, prison films, prison rape, prison riot, rape, remakes, Scum, Shane Kippel, Sheitan, Slim Twig, suicide, Taylor Poulin, Trent McMullen, William Ellis, writer-director, youth in trouble

Humans are amazingly resilient animals. We can endure any number of extreme climates, fight back against overwhelming odds and turn veritable wastelands into virtual paradises. We can ponder questions both basic and metaphysical, learn to do just about anything we set our minds to and wrestle the world at large into submission by sheer force of our nearly boundless will. Humans can do all of this (and more) with surprisingly little: all we really need is air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat and a little something to keep the elements off of our heads.

While these biological necessities go without saying, humans also need something that’s a little harder to categorize, a little more difficult to study in a lab. We also need hope. Hope that bad situations can become better, hope that we can achieve our dreams by working hard, hope that we can not only survive, on a day-to-day basis, but find some measure of personal happiness and satisfaction. Humans need hope just as much as we need sustenance and oxygen: without either one, we’re just empty husks of decaying meat, carcasses too stubborn to know that we’re already dead.

There is no hope in French writer-director Kim Chapiron’s Dog Pound (2010), although that’s not really surprising: after all, there was precious little hope in his shocking debut, Sheitan (2006), either. As a filmmaker, Chapiron possesses an almost supernatural ability to submerge his characters (and his audience) into such unrelentingly dark, tragic and terrible situations that the very concept of hope is both elusive and rather laughable. We know that Chapiron’s characters are all doomed from the very first frame: that they often don’t recognize this futility makes their inevitable struggles even more sad. These characters aren’t waving their arms for rescue: they’re thrashing around, frantically, as their increasingly tired bodies drift further and further from the shore, closer to their ultimate ends than they are to any new beginnings.

Essentially a remake of the grim and unrelenting British prison film, Scum (1979), Chapiron’s English-language debut (the film is Canadian but set in Montana) concerns the Enola Vale Youth Correctional Facility and the various individuals who are imprisoned there, as well as the ones doing the imprisoning. We’re quickly introduced to three inmates who will become our entry-way into this particular world: 16-year-old Ecstasy dealer/born victim, Davis (Shane Kippel); 15-year-old repeat offender/car-jacker Angel (Mateo Morales) and 17-year-old hot-head/nominal protagonist, Butch (Adam Butcher).

After being thrown into the facility (Butch has been transferred to Enola Vale after laying a ferocious beat-down on an abusive guard at his previous facility), the trio are quickly brought up to speed by Superintendent Sands (Trent McMullen) and the boys’ immediate authority figure, CO Goodyear (Lawrence Bayne). The rules are easy: do everything you’re told, behave yourself and walk the straight and narrow. The boys who manage to do that become “trustees” and earn more responsibilities, perks and freedom, along with signifying black shirts. The ones who don’t follow the rules get orange jump suits and a one-way ticket to “Special Unit” or, in extreme cases, solitary confinement.

As with any prison film (or actual prison, for that matter), day-to-day life in Dog Pound revolves around a strictly observed pecking order: the alpha dog gets to call the shots and dispense the punishment in whatever way he sees fit. In this particular case, the alpha dog is one seriously scary bully by the name of Banks (first-time actor/former prisoner Taylor Poulin, in a genuinely frightening performance), a character who takes an immediate dislike to both Davis and Butch, albeit for different reasons.

In Davis, Banks and his cronies, Looney (comedian Jeff McEnery) and Eckersley (Bryan Murphy, another first-time actor), see the quintessential weak link, the eternal victim that’s as vital to any bully as oxygen is to those aforementioned humans. They steal his new boots, envy his short sentence, submit him to constant abuse and, in a particularly devastating moment, subject him to a particularly violent sexual assault. Davis is the naive lamb, the chosen sacrifice for those too hard and jaded to feel anything besides hatred and the need to dominant. He’s the face of every petty drug offender tossed into the correctional system, the minnows that feed the sharks.

With Butch, the bullies see something altogether different: a genuine threat to their established social order. In order to maintain his position at the top, Banks must bend Butch to his will, show the pugilistic teen that he may have been able to take out a CO but he’ll never stand against Banks and his minions. While destroying Davis is “pure entertainment” for Banks and his crew, taking Butch down is something much more important: it’s a matter of survival, plain and simple.

As Davis, Butch and, to a much lesser extent, Angel (Morales ends up with the least screen-time, overall, leaving his character rather under-developed) try to negotiate these increasingly choppy waters, CO Goodyear tries to reach the youths through a combination of “tough love” and an unyielding need to do the right thing, even when the right thing isn’t the most pleasant thing. He’s not a perfect man, by any stretch of the imagination: over-worked, under-paid, given to sporadic moments of anger and too thin-stretched to ever affect much change, Goodyear, at the very least, tries. That all of his goodwill becomes undone in one tragic, accidental moment is, unfortunately, to be expected: there is no hope for anyone at Enola Vale, whether they’re behind the bars or in front of them.

This, ultimately, is both the film’s source of strength and its ultimate weakness: since there is no hope for anyone, Dog Pound is an unflinching, full-throttle descent into a literal hell on earth. The camera doesn’t cut away, we get no reprieve from anything that has happened or is about to happen. Even when the characters find some tiny measures of individual happiness, such as when Davis regales the other boys with made-up stories about outrageous sexual dalliances and becomes, if only momentarily, the closest thing he’ll get to “respected,” there’s always the notion that more misery, tragedy and gloom lies just around the corner.

In one of the film’s most subtle, if icky, moments, Butch immobilizes a wandering cockroach by spitting on it until the crawling critter is stuck fast in a globular prison of phlegm and saliva. The insect twitches and moves, compulsively, doing its best to break free, to pull itself from its sticky bonds and scurry off into the safety of the nearest dark corner. By the morning, however, the cockroach is still in the exact same position, drowned in a tiny pool of Butch’s spit. Despite what it might have thought, the roach never had a chance: it was dead the minute Butch’s spit nailed it to the floor, whether it knew it or not. In Dog Pound, the differences between the youthful offenders and the dead roach are many but the similarities? Infinite.

Despite its constantly dreary subject matter, Dog Pound is beautifully made and exquisitely acted, no small feat considering the non-professional status of a good half-dozen of its cast members (many of whom, like Poulin, are actually youth offenders, themselves). Andre Chemetoff’s cinematography captures the inherent grit and claustrophobic quality of the facility perfectly, while the subtle, moody score (featuring the work of instrumental ensemble Balmorhea, among others) counters the often sudden, stunning violence to masterful effect. As with Sheitan, it’s obvious that Chapiron is a filmmaker in full command of every aspect of his craft.

For all of this, however, Dog Pound is still pretty difficult to recommend. The reason, of course, goes back to the point I’ve been hammering this whole time: there is absolutely no hope to be found here, in any way, shape or form. This isn’t to say that every – or even any – film needs to end happily: this is to say that Dog Pound makes a particular point of pounding each and every character so deep into the ground that there’s no possible outcome but the one we get. Each and every victory is false, any and all attempts at understanding or evolution are met with the harshest possible retributions. There is no need for comic relief here, no hope of any of the protagonists coming out on top of their individual struggles. If there is any kind of message to Dog Pound, it’s as basic, cynical and bleak as possible: if you end up in this situation, you are completely, totally and irreparably fucked.

As an example of “feel-bad cinema,” Dog Pound is nearly peerless: this is the kind of film destined to ruin any good mood, turn any optimist into a card-carrying misanthrope. While the world around us can be a harsh, grim place, the world inside Enola Vale is nothing but gray: a million little variations of the shade, infecting every single person that steps behind its walls.

It’s tempting to say that Dog Pound is the kind of film that could change anyone’s opinion about the correctional system (or, at the very least, the youth correctional system) but that just isn’t true: the guards don’t shoulder an inordinate amount of the blame here any more than the inmates do. This is not a tale of power-mad authority figures trying to beat their wards into submission, nor is it a story about hard-working correctional officers dealing with the soul-killing every-day business of keeping individuals locked away from society.

At its heart, Dog Pound is a story about average people making (and continuing to make) terrible decisions, the kind of decisions that can bring nothing but pain to all around them. This is a film about wasted youth, about squandered loyalty and altruistic intent blown to pieces about the terrible reality of the human condition. This is a tragedy, in every sense of the word. This is a hopeless film about hopeless people in a hopeless place, crafted by a singularly unique, uncompromising filmmaker. If you can stomach it, Dog Pound will rip your beating heart from your chest and smash it to smithereens on the floor. There is truth to be found here, some fractured beauty and hints at what could have been, under far different circumstances.

There’s a lot to find and appreciate in Kim Chapiron’s Dog Pound but hope? That, my friends, is one commodity that’s in perilously short supply.

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12/26/14 (Part Two): Woody the Pimp

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best friends, cinema, dramadies, Fading Gigolo, Film, film reviews, gigolos, indie dramas, John Turturro, Liev Schrieber, low-key, male friendships, Movies, New York City, Orthodox Jews, pimps, rabbis, romances, Sharon Stone, Sofia Vargera, Vanessa Paradis, Woody Allen, writer-director-actor

If you were asked to come up with a list of actors who would seem like natural fits to play a pimp, I’m willing to wager that actor-director Woody Allen is probably the very last person you would think of: hell, there are probably dead people that would seem more appropriate for that kind of role. Allen, the patron saint of nebbishy, fidgety, neurotic indie-film characters since the mid-’60s, may be many things but a pimp? C’mon, already. For better or worse, however, that’s exactly the roll that Allen’s Murray fulfills in writer-director-actor John Turturro’s Fading Gigolo (2013), a modest little film that often feels like “Woody Allen-lite,” even as it approaches the material from a decidedly more earthy direction than Allen’s own films.

Murray (Woody Allen) and Fioravante (John Turturro) are best friends who also seem to be the two most low-key, laid-back guys in New York: Murray runs the dusty old bookstore that he inherited from his father (who inherited it from his father, before him), while Fioravante works a few hours a week in a little flower shop. After Murray has to close his shop, however, they take a look at their respective bank accounts and realize that they’re each uncomfortably close to the poor house, a prospect that causes the aging friends no end of worry.

After being approached by a doctor friend (Sharon Stone), however, Murray comes up with a new business strategy: he’s going to set his buddy Fioravante up with local women in need of some “adult” companionship. That’s right: Woody wants to pimp out his buddy to New York’s cougar population. Although initially hesitant, Fioravante quickly agrees, even adopting the nom de plume “Virgil Howard” as a way to keep both halves of his life separate. In short order, Fioravante is a very, very busy man and Murray is becoming a very wealthy one, as we find out in one of those montages that’s pretty de rigueur for this type of thing. Complications arise, however, when Murray sets Fioravante up with Avigal (Vanessa Paradis), a local Orthodox Jewish widow. This ends up raising the ire of Dovi (Liev Schreiber), one of the Orthodox neighborhood’s resident “patrolmen” and the poor schmuck who’s been admiring Avigal from afar for years. As Fioravante and Avigal appear to be falling for each other, Dovi conspires to uncover the truth about Murray’s activities, with the goal of hauling him before the neighborhood’s Orthodox rabbinate. And let’s not forget Dr. Parker and her friend, Selima (Sofia Vargera), whose only goal in life appears to be roping Fioravante into a threesome. What’s a nice, Italian boy to do when everybody, including his best friend, wants a piece of him? Why, keep smiling, that’s what!

For the most past, Fading Gigolo is the kind of modest, low-key film that doesn’t make much of an impact, even if there’s nothing especially wrong with it. The acting is solid, with Allen and Turturro reasonably convincing as friends and Stone and Vargera quite fun as the hot-to-trot cougars. The film is reasonably well made, with a great score, although the overly muddy color contrast is a bit of a bummer. The whole thing moves fairly quickly, although some of the machinations involving Schreiber’s character tend to make the film unnecessarily confusing and cluttered in the final third. For the most part, Fading Gigolo hits all of the required beats, even of most of them come and go without much fanfare.

This, then, is kind of the rub: while pleasant enough, little of Turturro’s film makes much of an impact…the whole thing is so breezy and lightweight as to be almost completely inconsequential. The subplot with Avigal and Fioravante never quite pans out as promised, making the whole thing feel a little extraneous, and there’s something a little too convenient about the way that Stone and Vargera’s ravenous characters are completely tamed in the presence of Turturro’s kind-hearted lover-man: this is a film where true love beats all because…well, just because.

While I’ve always been a huge fan of Turturro’s acting (I think he’s easily one of the most criminally under-rated actors around), this was actually my first experience with him as a writer-director and I must admit to being slightly underwhelmed: again, there’s nothing critically wrong with Fading Gigolo (aside from the inherently silly storyline, that is) but there’s also not a whole lot that sticks to the ribs, either. For the most part, Fading Gigolo comes and goes without making too much of a ripple, which might be some sort of parallelism regarding the two main characters but is, more than likely, just the mark of a film that’s decent enough but hardly relevatory.

12/9/14: Truth in Advertising

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Army of Darkness, Brett Gipson, Brian Posehn, Chillerama, cinema, co-writers, Danny Pudi, demons, Dungeons & Dragons, evil books, fantasy vs reality, film reviews, films, horror-comedies, horror-fantasy, Jimmi Simpson, Joe Lynch, Kevin Dreyfuss, Knights of Badassdom, LARPers, live-action role playing, long-delayed films, male friendships, Margarita Levieva, Matt Wall, Movies, Peter Dinklage, practical effects, role-playing games, Ryan Kwanten, Sam Raimi, special-effects extravaganza, Steve Zahn, succubus, Summer Glau, summoning demons

Ever since audiences were greeted with the blatant lies that were Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) and Leonard Part 6 (1987), we can all be forgiven if we take movie titles with a grain of salt. After all, filmmakers will try literally anything to get butts into seats: hell, Chariots of Fire (1981) didn’t feature one flaming horse-drawn vehicle, let alone multiple ones! The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)? Sound like a lot of bragging to me. Troll 2 (1990)? Trust me: the connection to the original extravaganza is, shall we say, tenuous at best. By this point, our eyes should be much more open: fool me twice and all that jazz.

For this very reason, Joe Lynch’s Knights of Badassdom (2013) should send up immediate signal flares: after all, the guy’s got the temerity to call his OWN characters “badass”…shouldn’t that be our job? I don’t know about you but I rather resent being force-fed someone else’s definition of “badass.” You see, I have pretty damn high standards as far as “badassdom” goes, standards which poor Joe can’t possibly hope to match. Should I be required to lower my own standards of what does and does not constitute “badassness” simply to satisfy his own misguided vision of his own creations?

Have no fear, fellow travelers: I’m here to tell you that, for once, there’s quite a bit of truth in this here advertising. While we may quibble over the degree, it’s more than fair to say that Lynch’s Knights of Badassdom is, indeed, quite badass. In some ways, he’s turned in the Army of Darkness (1992) sequel that folks have been clamoring about for the past couple decades: merging ridiculously over-the-top fantasy elements, deliciously snarky dialogue and some genuinely surprising gore effects, Knights of Badassdom is a real treat for those genre fans who like their fare loud, goofy and…well…badass.

After a nifty opening sequence that establishes a pretty cool mythos for a cursed medieval hymnal, we’re jumped into what appears to be a Satanic ceremony before finding out the fell truth: these folks be not of the olden times but, rather, are slightly more modern creations: LARPers. For those not in the know, LARPers (Live-action Role Players) are folks who take a look at tabletop gaming like Dungeons & Dragons and think, “This would be so much cooler if it were real.” To that end, LARPers dress in costume and assume the role of various characters (similar to role-playing games) in order to conduct large-scale “battles” and campaigns during the weekend: think of it as Lord of the Rings fans conducting Civil War reenactments and you’re in the right ballpark. While I’ve never actually LARPed, I’ve known a fair amount of folks who have and I can steadfastly vouch for the fact that the pastime is more than ripe for a little gentle satirization. Displaying not only a deft touch with skewering fantasy and LARP clichés but also a genuine fondness for his characters, Lynch turns what could have been a case of “Look at those dumb nerds” into something more traditionally heroic.

In short order, we’re introduced to our three main characters. The defacto protagonist, Joe (Ryan Kwanten), works in a garage, fronts a doom-metal band and has just written a rather intense “love song” for his girlfriend, Beth (Margarita Levieva), who promptly dumps him for being too “aimless.” Joe best friend, Eric (Steve Zahn), is a LARP obsessed millionaire who lives in a fake castle with the third member of their group, Hung (Peter Dinklage), another philosophy-spouting, perma-stoned LARPer.

Under the guise of helping Joe get over his fresh breakup, Eric and Hung get the poor fellow so drunk and high that he passes out, only to wake up somewhere in the woods, in full battle regalia: that’s right, in the spirit of best friends everywhere, Eric and Hung just shanghaied their friend and intend to force him to participate in their hobby as a way of taking his mind off his problems. Never mind the fact that Joe not only doesn’t participate in LARPing but actively mocks it and you have a sure-fire recipe for success, right?

Once there, we meet more of the rogues’ gallery including Ronnie (Jimmie Simpson), the batshit game master; Gwen (Summer Glau), the gorgeous warrior who kicks ass and takes names, her borderline autistic cousin Gunther (Brett Gipson), who’s so far into the game that he doesn’t seem to realize they’re actually playing a game and Lando (Community’s Danny Pudi, in a great role). If you guessed that Joe would end up falling for Gwen, you’ve either seen your fair share of these kinds of films or are mildly psychic. If you further guessed that Ronnie would be holding a grudge against Joe for some long-past slight (in this, giving his character “magic syphilis” during a heated Dungeons & Dragons session) and plans to get his revenge during the game, you’re really starting to scare me, man!

In order to appease the tyrannical Ronnie, Eric, Joe and Hung must perform a “resurrection” ceremony for Joe’s character, a ceremony which Eric opts to undertake using a non-regulation spellbook that he managed to get his hands on. As luck would have it, the spellbook is actually the very same cursed text from the opening (fancy that!) and Eric’s innocent “mumbo-jumbo” actually has a pretty dire outcome: he inadvertently calls forth a demonic succubus, a creature which assumes the face of Joe’s ex- as some sort of cruel cosmic joke. At first, no one is the wiser, as the succubus quickly and quietly works her way through the LARPers, ripping off a jaw here, yanking out a heart there. When tragedy strikes close to home and the truth of the situation is revealed, however, our intrepid crew have no choice but to spring into action and save their fellow role-players (and the world, presumably). As they’ll all come to find out, however, it’s one thing to wear armor and swing a plastic sword on the weekends but a whole other ball of wax to actually square off against ancient, all-powerful evil. Lucky for them, Eric always has a few real swords hanging around and it looks like it’s finally time for him to get…medieval.

Full disclosure: I really dug this film and, in time, might even come to love it. There’s such a gonzo, hyper sense of energy and fun to the proceedings that it’s impossible not to become sucked up in the silly spectacle of it all. Similar to Sam Raimi’s classic Evil Dead films, Lynch manages to come up with a perfect mixture of fantasy, humor and horror, with no one element really dominating the others, although the overall tone is almost always light and goofy. That being said, there are some genuinely strong horror moments here and some extremely well-done practical effects (the finale involving the monstrous demon and a mechanical dragon is a real showstopper) that definitely reminded me of the aforementioned Army of Darkness, right down to the mysteriously alive, sinister book at the heart of everything.

Perhaps the most critical element in a film like this (aside from a good script) is the cast and Knights of Badassdom manages to knock this one out of the park. While Zahn and Dinklage will probably be the most well-known names here, they’re ably matched by the rest of the cast. Kwanten is a great reluctant hero and his transition into armored asskicker by the film’s final reel is unbelievably satisfying. Glau, perhaps best known as River in Joss Whedon’s cult-classic Firefly series, makes the most out of a role that could’ve been more about the “male gaze” than character development: she never seems overly sexualized, however, and is never presented as a shrinking violet or “damsel in distress,” which is incredibly refreshing. Serving as glowering, silent counterpart to Glau’s sarcastic Gwen, Brett Gipson is pretty great as Gunther, who may or may not actually be a barbarian: he gets so many fist-raising moments in the film’s final 30 minutes that he nearly threatens to steal the show from the main characters.

Without a doubt, however, special recognition must be given to the amazing Jimmi Simpson, who makes Ronnie such a completely unforgettable character. Simpson, a remarkably gifted comic actor, has such a perfect sense of timing and delivery that virtually everything he says managed to provoke a laugh from me. Ronnie is the kind of character who could easily have become insufferable: he’s a complete jackass, an ineffectual moron who’s so myopic as to make Michael Scott seem like a major tactician. Despite this, however, Simpson is just so damn good that I found myself rooting for him despite of his caustic personality. As someone who’s head-over-heels for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I’ve always felt that Simpson’s portrayal of the astoundingly weird Liam McPoyle must stand as one of the best comic creations of the past 40 years: his performance as Ronnie isn’t quite as legendary but it’s not bringing up the rear by much, either.

In any other situation, a film like Knights of Badassdom would have me worshipping at the feet of the filmmakers but this is, unfortunately, the one area where I feel a little qualified in my support. While Knights of Badassdom is only Lynch’s second film, it was technically his debut: started in 2010 and only completely wrapped-up last year, KOB would definitely seem to indicate even greater things on the horizon. The immediate follow-up, however, Chillerama (2011), easily stands as one of the single worst films I’ve seen in my entire life, hands down. An anthology film, Chillerama features a collection of worthless shorts by filmmakers that should definitely know better (Adam Green, in particular): Lynch’s short, even when compared to the others, is really awful. Truth be told, if Lynch hadn’t been behind Knights of Badassdom, I would have completely written him off after seeing Chillerama (which I saw before screening Knights). As it stands, I really have no idea where he’s going from here: his next feature could either be an unmitigated classic or the equivalent of cinematic coal in the stocking…only time will tell.

At the end of the day, however, the only thing that really matters is what’s currently in front of us: Knights of Badassdom. On this regard, I was completely blown away. Basically, Lynch’s film is the epitome of crowd-pleasing. This is the kind of movie where the LARPer teams have names like “The Norse Whisperer” and “The Department of Gnomeland Security,” where the final showdown involves fighting a demon with the power of metal (the musical style, not the material) and various locations are named after icons of nerd-culture (my favorite being The Temple of Syrinx, which actually made me do a spit-take). It’s a film that starts out good and becomes gradually better until it’s final 30 minutes are just about as good as it gets, period. It’s the kind of film where characters look into the distance, utter pithy quips and remind us of why we go to the movies in the first place. Knights of Badassdom is the kind of film where you get a line like, “You speak Enochian but can’t drive a truck?!” one minute and “I’m going to stop saving your life if you don’t show me some fucking respect!” the next. It’s a complete blast and, quite possibly, some of the most fun I’ve had watching a film in ages. Joe Lynch’s Knights of Badassdom is, for lack of a better word, thoroughly “badass.” In the immortal words of that other wise-crackin’ badass: “Come get some.”

11/5/14: The One With the Pulp

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Adam Brody, adult children, adult friendships, Alia Shawkat, Allison Janney, Catherine Keener, cinema, co-writers, dramas, dramedy, estranged family, film reviews, films, friends, Hugh Laurie, Ian Helfer, infidelity, Jay Reiss, Julian Farino, Leighton Meester, male friendships, middle age, midlife crisis, Movies, Oliver Platt, romance, Sam Rosen, set during the holidays, suburban homes, The Oranges, troubled marriages, voice-over narration

While the “May-October” relationship between twenty-something-year old Nina (Leighton Meester) and fifty-something-year old David (Hugh Laurie) may be at the center of director Julian Farino’s The Oranges (2011), the “bromance” between David and next-door-neighbor/Nina’s father, Terry (Oliver Platt) is really the heart of the film. David and Terry, along with their respective families, are the kinds of neighbors that only seem to exist in cinematic versions of the real worlds, life-long friends who are close as kin and connected at the hip. This sense of unity is shattered as David’s family tries to come to terms with his infidelity and Nina’s family tries to come to terms with the fact that their beloved, if wayward, daughter is romantically involved with their middle-aged best friend. Bonds will be tested, relationships will fray and lots of life lessons will be learned: welcome to the “dramedy” as filtered through an after-school special.

Named after West Orange, New Jersey, The Oranges is anchored by the nearly constant voice-over presence of Vanessa (Alia Shawkat), David and Paige’s (Catherine Keener) daughter. Vanessa and Nina used to be as inseparable as their respective parents until Nina left Vanessa behind for the “cool kids” in high school, wedging a divide between the two that continues into the present. Vanessa is a rather aimless individual: she always wanted to be a designer but ends up working at Ikea, which is “close enough.”

Vanessa and her family’s lives are thrown into turmoil when Nina suddenly reappears after five years away from home. She’s just walked in on her fiancée, Ethan (Sam Rosen), with his tongue down someone else’s throat and has come back home to pull herself back together. Once home, Nina’s pushy mother, Cathy (Allison Janney), “encourages” her to go out with David and Paige’s son, Toby (Adam Brody), home for the holidays before heading to China for his job. When Toby has a little too much Christmas cheer, however, Nina ends up hanging out with David in his “man-cave” and watching TV. Turns out that David and Paige are kind of on the rocks right now: he’s been sleeping on the couch and she’s been throwing herself into her choir group with the kind of zeal normally reserved for hoarding animals. Before you can say, “Uh oh,” David and Nina have shared an illicit kiss, which blossoms into a full-blown love affair.

Once the affair hits the bright light of public opinion, however, things start to go rapidly downhill: Terry takes a swing at David, Vanessa calls her former friend a “slut” and blames her for breaking up her parents and Cathy pointedly asks her daughter if she enjoys “sucking on David’s old balls.” David and Nina are determined to make their relationship work, however, regardless of how it affects those around them. Just when Terry seems to be thawing a little, however, Ethan shows up on their doorstep, bound and determined to win Nina back: looks like everybody, especially the “adults,” are going to have a lot of growing up to do.

For the most part, The Oranges is a pretty by-the-book, formulaic “family in crisis” film, albeit one that hedges more on the side of the serious rather than the humorous: this is a “dramedy” where the comedy aspect is more ironic than anything else. With that being said, the film is blessed with a truly great cast doing great work: at times, this is enough to elevate the rather tired material, although there’s always an unfortunate “been there, done that” feel to everything. Keener, as always, is a master of the slow burn and her eventual breakdown is a textbook example of how to lash out while still keeping the audience firmly on one’s side. Shawkat, such a stand-out in Arrested Development, shows a serious side to her performance that’s rather bracing: there’s real pain and anger in her interactions with her father that are almost difficult to watch, at times. Janney gives another sturdy performance, with the highlight being the scene where she, literally, bumps into David and Nina at a no-tell motel. Meester, for her part, plays Nina as a flighty, impetuous and eminently selfish creature, so wrapped up in her own needs and wants that she doesn’t take any time whatsoever to consider those around her. It’s a rather unpleasant character, to be honest, and the filmmakers do nothing particular to sand off her rough edges: by the time Nina has completed her character arc, she’s the furthest thing from a sympathetic character but she certainly feels like a real person.

Without a doubt, however, The Oranges belongs to Hugh Laurie and Oliver Platt: their relationship is the true center of the film and provides the movies with the majority of its big emotional beats. In fact, the scene where the former friends finally stop and say hi to each other, in passing, is so impossibly sad and lovely that it handily eclipses any of the similar scenes between Nina and David or Nina and Ethan: this is a romance, true, but it’s not the one that folks might be expecting. There’s a breezy quality to Laurie and Platt’s interactions that feels 100% genuine, even in the more awkward, uncomfortable moments: this feels like how real people might handle this situation, warts and all.

Ultimately, The Oranges is a well-made, if exceedingly familiar, production: while the film breaks no new ground and feels remarkably free of real tension and conflict, the acting is superb and the movie is quick-paced and a pleasant-enough watch. More than anything, however, watching The Oranges brings up a very important question: why the hell hasn’t Hugh Laurie done more work like this? He brings a real sense of nuance and subtlety to his performance that’s light-years from anything he did on either Jeeves and Wooster or House. We need more Hugh Laurie, no two ways about it: The Oranges might not blow anyone away but it gives us that fix and that’s going to have to be good enough for the time being.

11/1/14 (Part Two): The Imaginarium of Dr. Anderson

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Adrien Brody, adventure, Alexandre Desplat, all-star cast, auteur theory, best films of 2014, coming of age, concierge, contested will, Edward Norton, F. Murray Abraham, Film auteurs, friendship, Grand Budapest Hotel, Jeff Goldblum, lobby boy, M. Gustave, magical-realism, male friendships, Mathieu Amalric, Ralph Fiennes, Robert D. Yeoman, romance, Rushmore, Saoirse Ronan, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Royal Tennenbaums, the Society of the Crossed Keys, Tilda Swinton, Tony Revolori, Wes Anderson, Willem Dafoe, writer-director, Zero Moustafa

Even though the concept may no longer be in fashion, there really is no better word to describe writer-director Wes Anderson than “auteur”: it’s quite impossible to mistake any of his movies for the work of any other filmmaker and, as a whole, his back catalog is just as indispensable as those of Martin Scorcese, John Ford or Francis Ford Coppola. With a fussy, vibrant and immaculately composed style that recalls such filmmaking peers as Peter Greenaway and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Anderson has been making wonderfully quirky odes to the importance of family (both biological and “acquired”) for nearly 20 years now. While Anderson’s canon is one of the most high-quality bodies of work in modern cinema, his newest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), might just be the most inherently “Andersonian” film he’s yet crafted, a gorgeous, baroque and almost impossibly dense marvel that spans some 80 years of European history and introduces the world to one of his all-time best characters: the amazingly vibrant M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), ever-faithful head concierge at the titular establishment.

Opening with a flashback structure that most resembles a set of those Russian nesting dolls, we begin in the present, where a young girl is visiting the grave site of the author responsible for the book, “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” before jumping back to 1985, where we actually meet the author (Tom Wilkinson) before jumping back, again, to 1968. At this point, we’re introduced to Mr. Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham), the fantastically wealthy owner of the Grand Budapest Hotel: he agrees to tell the author the story of how he came to own the hotel, which jumps us back one final time to 1932, where the meat of the tale occurs.

We now meet Moustafa when he’s but a lowly lobby boy (Tony Revolori), taken under the wing of the indomitable M. Gustave. Gustave is the whip-smart, rakish force-of-nature who is the living embodiment of everything the Grand Budapest stands for. He’s also quite the Don Juan, as it turns out, handily romancing the lonely, elderly ladies who constantly stream in and out of the hotel. “She was dynamite in the sack,” he fondly reminisces to Zero, only to be told, incredulously, that she was 84 years old. “I’ve had older,” he happily replies, “When you’re young, it’s all filet steak, but as the years go by, you have to move on to the cheap cuts. Which is fine with me, because I like those. More flavorful, or so they say.” One of these “cheap cuts,” as it were, is Madame D (Tilda Swinton), an exceptionally wealthy society matriarch and one of Gustave’s biggest “fans.” When Madame D dies after a passionate evening with Gustave, the concierge suddenly finds himself bequeathed a priceless painting, much to the massive consternation of Madame D’s patently awful son, Dmitri (Adrien Brody).

Convinced that Gustave killed his mother in order to gain access to her fortune, Dmitri is bound and determined to see Gustave in leg-irons. With the help of his sleazy right-hand man, Jopling (Willem Dafoe), Dmitri frames Gustave and gets him thrown into prison. As anyone whose met him can attest, however, it’s patently impossible to keep the irrepressible Gustave penned up and he’s soon on the lam, thanks to an ingeniously messy prison break. With the help of the always-faithful Zero and his new lady-love, Agatha (Saoirse Ronan), Gustave must work to clear his name and assume his rightful reward, even as Dmitri and Jopling cut a bloody swath through the countryside. With the dedicated Inspector Henckels (Edward Norton) on his trail, however, escape won’t be easy and Gustave, Zero and Agatha might just find themselves in the fight of their lives.

Above and beyond almost all of Anderson’s previous films, The Grand Budapest Hotel practically demands repeat viewings in order to parse through the dense, layered material. There’s an awful lot going on in the film: not only do we deal with all of Gustave’s madcap adventures but there’s also the implied background of the film, itself, to deal with. Set between World Wars I and II, in the imaginary Republic of Zubrowka, The Grand Budapest Hotel deals (albeit in a slightly modified way) with the events that lead up to World War II, specifically the German aggression which would, in turn, lead to the National Socialist Party. Despite its loose, easy-going nature, the specter of the SS (here renamed the ZZ) and World War II hangs over The Grand Budapest Hotel like a pall, subtly informing everything from the background politics of the piece to interactions between the various characters. Despite its weighty subject-matter, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a remarkably light-weight film, certainly more easy-going and laid-back than one might expect for a film that discusses, in a roundabout way, the societal issues which led to the rise of the Nazis.

Two of the most “Andersonian” features of any of his films are the exceptional ensemble casts and meticulously detailed mise en scene and, in these regards, The Grand Budapest Hotel may just be the pick of the litter. The film looks absolutely gorgeous, so pretty and detailed as to almost seem like the life-sized embodiment of a miniature-adorned dollhouse. The Hotel, itself, is a masterpiece of baroque architecture, although the film is never short of astounding locations: Gustave’s prison, in particular, is a real marvel and reminded me of nothing so much as one of Jeunet’s eye-popping, studiously “unrealistically real” sets. And then, of course, there’s that cast…

It goes without saying that Fiennes is superb as Gustave: he’s one of cinema’s finest actors and he rips into the character of Gustave with real zeal, disappearing into the role so completely that it never seemed like acting. Watching Fiennes work is a real pleasure and he brings Gustave to glorious life with ease. The real surprise and shining star in the cast (which manages to include a veritable ocean of “blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em” cameos by acting heavyweights such as Harvey Keitel, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum and Jude Law), however, is Tony Revolori as the rock-solid lobby boy. Revolori, with only one full-length film under his belt prior to The Grand Budapest Hotel, is a complete revelation: watching his performance, I was struck with the notion that here, before our very eyes, is a star on the rise. Revolori is absolutely perfect in the film: whether courting Agatha, decking Dmitri or saving Gustave’s life (multiple times), Zero is a completely three-dimensional, warm character and Revolori is a thoroughly magnetic performer. There’s a realness to Zero’s relationships with both Gustave and Agatha that lends the film a truly bittersweet edge. For her part, Ronan is marvelous as Agatha: as far from a generic “manic pixie girl” as one can get, there’s an edge to her character that’s nicely balanced by a real sense of intelligence. She’s a more than suitable partner for Zero and holds her own quite nicely.

On the “bad guy” side, both Brody and Dafoe turn in fantastic, endlessly fun performances as Dmitri and Jopling, respectively, with Dafoe turning in one of the most effortlessly “cool” performances of a long and storied career. It’s quite obvious that both actors are having a blast with their characters: Anderson even allows Dafoe engage in a little bit o’ the old ultra-violence that his cinematic characters are normally known for when he slams a door on a character’s hand, cutting off several fingers in the process. Unlike some of Anderson’s previous films, there’s a real sense of danger and imminent violence to be found in The Grand Budapest Hotel and much of the credit for this must go to Dafoe, who still manages to seem like one of the most dangerous guys in the world, even as he pushes sixty.

As previously mentioned, all of these aspects add up to not only one of the finest films of 2014 but, arguably, one of the finest films of Anderson’s storied career. While I didn’t find the film to be as immediately gripping as either Rushmore (1998) or The Royal Tennenbaums (2001), that’s not really a fair “criticism,” either: Anderson’s second and third movies are absolutely perfect masterpieces of modern cinema and I doubt that anything will ever quite equal that pair. That being said, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a real marvel: endlessly fun, inventive and appropriately bittersweet, the film has an epic scope that’s belied by Anderson’s typically low-key goals. At its heart, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a story about misfits trying to find their way in an increasingly cold-hearted world, about the importance of family and friends and about the joy…nay, the need, to remain true to yourself in a homogenous world. M. Gustave is a true individual, as is Zero Moustafa: united against the world, they’re capable of anything. Come to think of it, that sounds like a pretty damn good description for Anderson, too: a true individual whose capable of absolutely anything.

10/6/14 (Part Two): Middle Age, Pints and Blue Goop

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31 Days of Halloween, alien invasion, auteur theory, Best of 2013, British comedies, British films, cinema, co-writers, David Bradley, Eddie Marsan, Edgar Wright, favorite films, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, friends, Gary King, horror-comedies, Hot Fuzz, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, male friendships, Martin Freeman, Michael Smiley, Movies, Nick Frost, obnoxious friends, Paddy Considine, Pierce Brosnan, pubs, Rosamund Pike, sci-fi, Shaun of the Dead, siege, SImon Pegg, the Cornetto trilogy, the Golden Mile, the Network, The World's End, writer-director, youth vs old age

Like most vacation destinations, nostalgia is a great place to visit but a pretty awful place to live. While all of us may spend at least some part of our lives pining for “the good old days” and hoping to relive past glories, there comes a time when we must plant our eyes firmly ahead and charge straight into the unknown, lest we find that our lives have become the equivalent of a hamster ball: furious motion with no chance of forward movement. In a real reason sense, nostalgia can kill…but it sure is a pretty poison.

Writer-director Edgar Wright’s The World’s End (2013), the third entry in his unofficial “Cornetto Trilogy” that also features Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007), is a movie that’s not only about the curse of nostalgia but also informed by this very phenomena: it’s a classic case of having your cake and eating it, too, if you will and it’s doubtful that many directors could pull it off as capably as Wright does here. The end result is wildly successful and, as far as I’m concerned, ranks as Wright’s greatest film, thus far, a towering achievement that manages to be equal parts gut-busting and thought-provoking. It’s a film that should be enjoyed by just about anyone but will have particular relevance to that portion of society who find themselves aging into versions of themselves that seem distinctly watered-down from their youthful ideals. For anyone approaching middle-age who’ve ever taken a long look in the mirror and asked, “What the hell happened to me?,” Wright’s got the cheeky answer: “You got fucking old, mate…it happens to the best of us.”

The man-child at the center of Wright’s latest opus is Gary King, expertly portrayed by Wright regular Simon Pegg, who’s managed to turn these type of roles into something of a cottage industry. From his start on the BBC with cult-hit Spaced to more recent films like How To Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008) and A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012), Pegg has become something of the go-to guy for schlubs trying to relive their youth, characters who would rather get ripped at the pub, play video games all day long and avoid honest work than buckle down and admit that the care-free days are far in the rearview mirror.

In this case, Gary King is firmly stuck in the past: 1991, to be exact, which happens to be the year that he and his pack of friends attempted, but failed, to complete the Golden Mile. The Golden Mile entails drinking a pint at twelve different pubs, culminating in the titular World’s End pub. As far as he’s concerned, Gary’s life never got any better than that one debauched night and he’s spent the two decades since chasing that same dragon. He wears the same clothes as he used to, drives the same junker car, listens to the exact same mixtape and obsessively dwells on every minute detail of that era. When it all gets to be too much, Gary decides to do the only “sensible” thing: get the band back together, as it were, and give the Golden Mile another go.

There’s only one problem: Gary’s crew haven’t seen him in 20-odd years and many of them detest him with a passion normally reserved for baby-stealing dingoes. Never one to let common sense spoil a good plan, Gary goes about insinuating himself back into the lives of his former comrades, all the while trying to wheedle them into giving their old drinking challenge another try. Times, of course, have moved on and so have Gary’s “friends”: Andy (Nick Frost), Peter (Eddie Marsan), Oliver (Martin Freeman) and Steve (Paddy Considine) all have their own lives, jobs and responsibilities to see to and none of them, particularly former best friend Andy, want anything to do with their former “leader.”

Gary’s nothing if not insistent, however, and in no time, he’s got the group back on the Golden Mile. As they pub-hop, however, issues old and new continue to rear their ugly heads: Andy is now a teetotaling “party-pooper” while no one is willing to forgive Gary’s past (and present) churlish behavior. When Oliver’s sister, Sam (Rosamund Pike) enters the picture, new conflicts abound: Gary had sex with Sam in the bathroom on that fateful night so long ago, but it’s poor Steve who’s always pined for her. Just when Gary’s insensitive, assholish behavior threatens to tear the group apart for the second time, they become united in something that seems a bit more important: the group stumbles upon a sinister plot to usurp humanity and invade our planet, a plot which they seem to be in the unique position to foil…even they can quit taking pot-shots at each other, that is. As Gary and his friends fight for the very survival of our species, they’re also fighting for the survival of their long-gone friendships and relationships, seeking to move from the immature past into the responsible present. If they succeed, mankind will live to fight another day. If they don’t, however, we may just see a future that makes Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) seem more like public service announcement than flight of fancy.

The most important thing to note about The World’s End is how absolutely, completely and totally enthralling the film is: from the very first to the very last one, Wright’s film grabs the audience by the lapels and doesn’t let go. From rapid-fire dialogue to an endless array of inventive and (frequently) astounding sight gags to one thrilling setpiece after another, The World’s End is absolutely relentless. The film rarely comes up for breath and hardly ever slows down. This could, of course, be a recipe for one very tiresome film: nonstop chaos is almost impossible to pull off, as evidenced by the fact that even mostly successful films like Airplane (1980) feature as many leaden duds as high-soaring hits. Thanks to the exceptional script, sure-handed direction and fantastic ensemble cast, however, The World’s End is one high-point after the other.

Truth be told, I’d already fallen in love with the film by the time the opening credits rolled: the next 100 minutes simply served to reaffirm this feeling. While I enjoyed both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, there was something about The World’s End that really struck a chord with me. Perhaps it’s the theme of aging gracefully into a more mature version of yourself…perhaps it was the wildly inventive invasion plot…perhaps it was just the fact that the film manages to hit all of its marks and then some…whatever the reason, The World’s End hooked me hard and refused to let go.

Since part of the film’s endless charm comes from the myriad surprises that it manages to throw at the audience, I’d be remiss to shed too much light on any of them. Suffice to say that the film features fist-raising moments galore: a spot-on reference to the under-rated Dead and Buried (1981); clever riffs on Invasion of the Body Snatchers; a throw-away visual reference to The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) that’s made my jaw drop, a little; the fact that the climax manages to revolve around not just one but two classic clichés of sci-fi cinema; Nick Frost playing a neebish…Martin Freeman taking his prim and proper caracatures to their logical extreme…the film is like an endless replenishing box of goodies, coughing up untold comic treasures at a moment’s notice.

The comedy’s not the only thing that hits the mark, however: The World’s End succeeds just as capably as a sci-fi/horror film, featuring some truly intense and frightening scenes. The moments where the Blanks’ eyes and mouths become the equivalent of high beams is a truly chilling moment, whereas the numerous fight scenes are brilliantly choreographed and staged. One fight in particular, which features Simon Pegg moving in and around a brawl while attempting to avoid spilling his treasured pint of lager, is pure gold, perhaps the single best fight scene I’ve seen in years. Make no bones about it: The World’s End is a very, very funny film. It’s also a very thrilling film, however: the two polar opposites are absolutely not mutually exclusive, in this case.

In truth, there’s very little real criticism I can give the film, aside from the fact that I felt the final coda was a bit silly and unnecessary. Aside from that, however, I found myself in a pretty constant state of awe for nearly two hours. The World’s End is a smashing success, a film that sets a pretty high bar for itself, right out of the gate, and then manages to effortlessly hurdle that bar. It’s a film that can be enjoyed by anyone but should be treasured by those folks with even a passing interest in sci-fi (classic and otherwise).

There’s one point in the film where Gary posits that something must be going on with the people in the town because they’ve “changed”: 20 years later and no one seems to be acting the way he remembered. He never once, of course, allows for the distressing notion that he might be the one who’s changed, not them. We’d like to believe that we’re the truest people out there, the equivalent of a bunch of Holden Caulfields stomping through the masses, pointing out “phonies” left and right. In reality, however, we’re all just as compromised as the next person: time and the need to survive make hypocrites of us all.

Gary thinks that if he can just retrace his steps, he’ll be able to unlock some sort of Fountain of Youth, some way to prevent any more of himself from slipping away. He’s wrong, of course: the most that any of us can do is face the future, keep our backs to the past and keep trudging forward. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to make the journey with some good friends and companions. If not, we’ll keep circling the drain spout of irrelevance, ending up as no more than the dreams that our youthful selves never dared to hope might one day come true. When an ultra-goofy alien invasion comedy can make you think about stuff like this, you have what I like to call a classic on your hands.

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.

6/18/14: Every Group’s Got One

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Amanda Lund, Barry Burke, Brett Gelman, cinema, comedies, comedy, Damon Wayans Jr., Damon Wayons Jr., Ed Helms, father-son relationships, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Frances Shaw, friends, Greg Germann, Hayes MacArthur, J. Robin Miller, Lucy Punch, male friendships, Melanie Miller, modern dating, Movies, obnoxious friends, Our Time is Up, relationships, Rob Pearlstein, romantic-comedies, Someone Marry Barry, Thomas Middleditch, true love, Tyler Labine, writer-director, Wyatt Oleff

Every group has one, whether they want to admit it or not: that hyperactive, obnoxious, vulgar “life of the party” who always manages to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing and drag everyone down with them. These are the kind of people who get their friends thrown out of bars for starting fights with karaoke machines, punch police horses in the face and wear cargo shorts to fancy cocktail parties. They’ll be all too happy to blab your innermost secrets to the nearest available ears and have the special ability to attract more attention while out in public than firecrackers in a bubble-wrap factory. These people are embarrassing, crude, rude, loud-mouthed jerks and, more often than not, are supremely pleased by this: there’s no notion of changing these folks because they’re quite happy as they are, thank you. Every group has a name for these “special” individuals, these life-long friends that will always have your back, seemingly so they can concoct new ways to mortify you. We’ve all known people like this and, just perhaps, we’ve even been people like this. In the case of Rob Pearlstein’s uproarious new film, Someone Marry Barry (2014), this particular “someone” is named Barry Burke and, boy…is Barry really something!

Kurt (Thomas Middleditch), Desmond (Damon Wayans Jr.) and Rafe (Hayes MacArthur) are lifelong best friends with a bit of a problem: namely, Barry (Tyler Labine), the fourth member of their group. Kurt is trying to take his fractured relationship with longtime on-again/off-again girlfriend Camille (Frances Shaw) to the next level, Desmond is trying to find ways to balance his crushing work-load with spending more time with his neglected wife, Rachel (Amanda Lund) and Rafe is trying to balance the trials of modern dating with being a single father to precocious tyke J.T. (Wyatt Oleff). On their own, any of these tasks would be full-time jobs: throw in the frequently outrageous antics of best friend Barry, however, and things become that much more intolerable. After a particular humiliating experience at the funeral for Rafe’s father, during which Barry manages to not only reveal the deceased’s affairs in front of the assembled mourners but also manages to work in references to Kurt’s previous experience in an adult theater (Kurt the Squirt), the friends decide that something must be done with their boorish best friend. Since bumping him off is out of the question (despite Kurt’s continued protests), the friends decide to do the next best thing (in their minds, at least) and get Barry married off. If Barry has someone to keep him in line, like Desmond and Kurt do, they reason, he won’t be able to get them all into as much trouble. If wishes were horses, of course, we’d all ride away. In this case, Kurt, Rafe and Desmond might be wise to wait before investing in that stable.

Throwing themselves headfirst into the task, the trio try everything they can to help Barry find true love, including a disastrous speed dating session (turns out Barry is actually harder to take in small doses, fancy that) and an attempt to purchase a mail-order bride that could best be described as “potentially terrifying.” Just when all else fails, however, true love appears to rear its bizarre head in the form of one Melanie Miller (Lucy Punch). Mel, for lack of a better descriptor, is a female Barry: we first meet here in the middle of a date with the unlucky Ben (Ed Helms) which involves her graphic description of her yeast infection (her “beast inspection”), as well as the lovely declaration that she needs to take a shit. Turns out that Barry is on an equally successful date at the same restaurant and ends up sharing a cab with Mel after their respective dates run for cover (with each other, ironically enough). Barry and Mel hit it off like penguins and polar bears, at first, with each person trying to one-up the other in terms of sheer unpleasant foulness. In short order, however, a grudging respect has been forged: neither Barry nor Mel has ever met anyone quite like the other person. It’s almost like they were made for each other…although, if not for each other than, quite frankly, for whom?

In no time at all, sparks are flying and Barry and Mel seem to be head over heels for each other. Seeking to bring all of the friends together, as it were, the group plans a nice weekend away at the cabin: what should be a perfect opportunity for Kurt, Camille, Desmond, Rachel and Rafe to meet their “savior” for the first time devolves into abject horror once the group realizes that Mel is just a female Barry. After a car-trip filled with tag-team farting, annoying techno music and irritating laughing, the group is just about ready to pull their hair out. Is putting up with another Barry worth the price of preserving their childhood friendship? Should they all tell Barry how annoying Melanie is? Just what, exactly, is true love and does everyone have the right to experience it…including the truly irritating? At what point do friends need to sever ties and go their own ways…and does the needs of the group ever outweight an individual’s desire to be happy?

There are a few things that I ask of comedies but the main thing is pretty basic: I ask that they be funny. Comedies can be subtle, provoking a few chuckles and some smiles, or they can be explosively hilarious, prompting belly laughs and doubling-over on the floor. While either approach is valid, they have to at least broach the subject in order to get me on board. How does Someone Marry Barry stack up in this regard? Explosively. Quite frankly, Pearlstein’s film is one of the absolutely funniest I’ve seen in quite some time: I started laughing early on in the film and ended up laughing all the way through. Without putting too fine a point on it, Someone Marry Barry is a pretty great film but the humor is one of its strongest attributes. Pearlstein’s script is exceptionally sharp, full of tons of great dialogue, vulgar but hilarious situations and outrageous but sympathetic character development.

Actually caring about the characters in a film like this is paramount to its success and Pearlstein knocks it completely out of the park in that regard. Not only are the characters in the film funny, on their own, but they work together amazingly well as an ensemble. I actually felt like Kurt, Rafe, Desmond and Barry were life-long friends, with all of the baggage that such relationships require. Since the friendships felt justified and real, it was a lot easier to take Barry’s outrageous behaviour in stride: watching the film, I would often think back to my own churlish actions and how my friends reacted, which weren’t so far off the mark. The acting in the film is really top-notch: Damon Wayans Jr. is a dependably put-upon performer and Silicon Valley’s Middleditch brings just the right amount of pathetic “puppy dog”-ness to his portrayal of Kurt (his ultimate meltdown with Camille is one of the highlights of the film).

While the acting is superb across the board, especially from the principal actors, Someone Marry Barry ends up being a complete tour de force for Tyler Labine and Lucy Punch. I’ve always really enjoyed Labine as an actor: in fact, he’s one of those guys, like Ray Wise or Ron Perlman, that will draw me straight to a project, regardless of what I know (or don’t know) about said film. In the case of Someone Marry Barry, his prominent place on the box art was 100% responsible for my choosing the film in the first place and, as usual with Labine, I wasn’t disappointed. Quite simply, Labine is one of the very finest comedic actors in the business right now and is perilously close to approaching “living treasure” status: if you don’t automatically watch all of his films, correct that mistake immediately. While I really can’t praise Labine enough, however, I’d be a complete fool to deny Punch any of her own glory in the film. Punch is a vibrant, vulgar, loud-mouthed, brash, completely obnoxious, thoroughly alive and absolutely indispensable character. She’s one of the most joyous, realistic female characters I’ve ever seen portrayed and is absolutely the match for any bloke in the house. Were there a belching contest involved, I’d put my coins on Punch’s Melanie. First person to help out a friend in need? I’m more than willing to wager Melanie would be there, too. Far from being just “one of the guys,” Punch’s Mel is just “a person” who happens to be female: as she reminds us (frequently) throughout the film, women shit, swear, fuck, pick their noses, make mistakes and act like total assholes…just like guys.

While the film functions superbly as a buddy-comedy focused on male relationships (I hesitate to use the “bro-mance” tag but if the slipper fits…), the messy, wonderful romance between Mel and Barry serves as its big, beating heart. While Barry and Mel might be fairly awful people, in many ways, they’re perfect for each other and there’s something truly magical (and kind of old-fashioned, which ends up suiting the film well) about watching these two soulmates find each other. It’s to the film’s immense credit that despite the endless jokes about bathroom habits, sexual functions and inventive swearing (Barry and Mel bond over their mutual use of the portmanteau “twunt,” which you should be clever enough to figure out), all of the typical romance film beats (finding love, getting separated, re-finding each other) are delivered with such energy and genuine interest. This is isn’t a filthy comedy that threw a romance in to “even things out.” Rather, this is an honest-to-god romance that just seems to come wrapped in a pretty degenerate casing: think There’s Something About Mary (1998) but with a much more likable lead.

Writer-director Pearlstein makes his feature-film debut here, although he already comes with a pretty decent notch on his filmmaking belt: his 2005 short film, Our Time is Up, was nominated for an Academy Award. Pearlstein is completely self-assured behind the camera, although the film has the occasional tendency (never overly so) to be a tad bit silly. With a little more focus on the sharper, more incisive aspects of his very funny script, Pearlstein would have had an unmitigated masterpiece (no hyperbole intended): as it stands, however, he’ll just have to be satisfied with one of the funniest, big-hearted and impressive comedies I’ve seen in quite some time. While I’ve been a fan of Labine’s for years, Someone Marry Barry was my first experience with Rob Pearlstein: after this, however, I’ve made sure to add him to my “Ones to Watch” list. I’m a guy who really likes to laugh and Pearlstein managed to hit all the right buttons: here’s to hoping this guy has a long, fruitful career ahead of him.

6/14/14 (Part One): That Sparkling Film of Gold

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1960's films, Arthur Hunnicutt, auteur theory, based on a book, Charlene Holt, Christopher George, cinema, classic films, Cole Thornton, drunk sheriff, Ed Asner, El Dorado, favorite films, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, friendships, George Alexander and the Mellomen, gunfighters, Harold Rosson, Howard Hawks, iconic film scores, James Caan, John Wayne, Leigh Brackett, male friendships, Michele Carey, Mississippi, Movies, Nelse McLeod, Nelson Riddle, ranchers, Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo, Robert Mitchum, romance, Sheriff Harrah, The Big Sleep, The Empire Strikes Back, The Long Goodbye, the myth of the Old West, the Old West, the Wild West, The Wizard of Oz, theme songs, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, water rights, Westerns

If you’re anything like me, selecting one film as your “favorite” is probably a pretty impossible task. My likes can change based on mood, time of day, the weather outside, research I’ve done, other films I’ve seen and conversations I’ve had with other cinephiles. If 100 different people were to ask me the same question, they might receive any of seven or eight different answers, depending on any of the above. Rankings, of course, are a strictly arbitrary construction: if it seems difficult to select your favorite film of all time, try choosing your fourth favorite film of all time…at some point, it all just comes down to a question of personal preference. Truth be told, I don’t know that I could ever come up with a definitive answer to the question, although I’ll make damn sure to take a stab at it on my deathbed. By that time, hopefully, I’ll have been able to make up my mind a little better.

While it may be all but impossible for me to ever choose a “favorite” film, however, it’s a whole lot easier to choose the possible candidates. From my childhood all the way up to the present day, there have been some films that just get more attention from me than others. This group of films (more than five but less than ten…I think) still gets watched on a regular basis, at least once a year if not more often, despite my ever-present desire to continue to see as many new and previously unseen films as humanly possible. Some of this group of films tends to be seasonal (Carpenter’s original Halloween (1978) and Dougherty’s neo-classic Trick ‘r Treat (2007)), whereas others are good to go anytime, anywhere (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Goodfellas (1990)). The one common thread that all of these films share is that I never get tired of them, regardless of how many times I’ve seen them. Each viewing of these favorites bring me some deeper understanding of the films and solidifies my notion that these films are, for better or worse, the very best (at least as far as I’m concerned). If you’ve spent nearly 30 years watching the same film and aren’t tired of it, I think you can pretty much assume you never will be. In this vein, Howard Hawks’ legendary El Dorado (1966) must surely take a position of honor in my list: I first saw the film when I was a little boy and have loved it unconditionally ever since. After 30-odd years, El Dorado is still as fresh, fun, thrilling and fist-raising as it ever was.

I like to think that I’m able to view films with a particularly critical eye but there are still certain movies that produce an almost Pavlovian response in me: Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) get me with their scores, The Man With No Name trilogy and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre get me with their openings and Dirty Harry (1971) gets me pretty much every damn time Eastwood is on-screen. With El Dorado, my adrenaline starts pumping the second the opening kicks in and that glorious theme song, performed so perfectly by George Alexander and the Mellomen, begins. For my money, El Dorado may just have one of the most perfect opening credit sequences in the history of film: as Alexander’s tuneful baritone begins the tune by referencing Edgar Allen Poe’s eponymous poem, we get a series of old-fashioned oil-color paintings that depict various mainstays of the Old West: the range-riding cowboy, covered-wagon riding settlers, stampeding herds of mustangs and dusty twilight landscapes. Alexander’s mellifluous voice continues to rise, creating a truly cinematic moment: you feel not only the history and “reality” of the Old West but you feel the myth and legend, as well. Never mind that the song is absolutely brilliant, perhaps the best Western theme song ever: when combined when the paintings, the tune manages to not only tell a story (in some ways, the whole of the film is in there, writ small) but to flood the viewer with the notion that what we’re about to see is just as much glorious make-believe as it is reference to a real era. Regardless of my mood on any given day, just watching the opening credit sequence for El Dorado is enough to put a smile on my face and keep me humming along for the next 24 hours.

We begin with Sheriff J.P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum), the sardonic, dead-eye sheriff of the frontier town of El Dorado. Harrah’s best friend, the plain-talking hired gun Cole Thornton (John Wayne), has come through town in order to go see land baron Bart Jason (Ed Asner) about a potential job. Turns out that Jason wants to use Thornton to help steal water from the MacDonald family, in order to help with his own developments. Harrah talks Thornton out of taking the job and Cole hits the road, leaving behind his “best girl” Maudie (Charlene Holt) and Sheriff Harrah to keep the peace. On the road, Cole is forced to gut-shoot Luke MacDonald (Johnny Crawford) after the startled lookout starts shooting at the gunslinger. After the boy ends up taking his own life, Cole brings the body back to the MacDonald ranch: “Never send a boy to do a man’s job,” he tells the elder MacDonald and he’s right. So right, in fact, that MacDonald’s fiery, take-no-shit daughter Joey (Michele Carey) decides to head-out and wait for Thornton on the road. While her ambush doesn’t kill Cole, as planned, it does leave him with a bullet in his back and plenty of residual pain.

Seven months later, Cole returns to El Dorado and finds the place in a bit of an uproar: Sheriff Harrah has turned into the town drunk (and laughing-stock) thanks to a bad relationship and Bart Jason rules everything with an iron fist. He’s brought in a ruthless gunslinger, Nelse McLeod (Christopher George), to finish the job that he tried to start with Cole. Things aren’t looking too good for Cole, who’s still experiencing pain and loss of feeling from the bullet which is still lodged near his spine. Things get a whole lot better when Cole happens to meet young Mississippi (James Caan), however: Mississippi is a bit of a hot head and is completely wet-behind-the-ears but he’s also whip-smart, fiercely loyal and absolutely lethal with a hunting knife. If he can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a sixgun…well…that shouldn’t be too much of a problem: as Cole points out, you don’t need to aim with a sawed-off shotgun…you just gotta point and shoot. After cleaning up the sloshed sheriff, Cole, Mississippi and Harrah join forces with Harrah’s deputy, former “Indian fighter” Bull (Arthur Hunnicutt), in order to bring down the villainous Bart Jason. The bullets are gonna fly as Cole and his friends seek to bring peace to El Dorado one way or another.

In many ways, El Dorado functions as a remake of Hawks’ own Rio Bravo (1959): the basic plot is the same and many of the characters in El Dorado seem to be slight variations on the characters from Rio Bravo. John Wayne plays, essentially, the same character in both films, while Robert Mitchum, James Caan and Arthur Hunnicutt are just variations on the characters that Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan first established in Rio Bravo. That being said, however, El Dorado is anything but a pale imitation of Hawks’ earlier film. For one thing, Mitchum is miles above Dean Martin as far as acting goes: sorry, Dino, but them’s the facts. When Mitchum was on point, he was pretty much invincible and Sheriff J.P. Harrah might be his best role besides Night of the Hunter (1955). I’ve also got nothing against Ricky Nelson, whose Colorado Ryan is a nice addition to the “naive, wet-behind-the-ears gunfighter” club but compared to James Caan? Sorry, Ricky…lights out on this one. Caan is absolutely fantastic in El Dorado, striking a perfect synthesis of “newbie jitters” and ridiculously self-assured braggadocio.  His plain-spoken, painfully honest declarations would be the highlight of any lesser film but, here, are just another brick in a pretty amazing wall. And as for Brennan versus Hunnicutt? This is a tougher call but c’mon: Bull is such a kickass character that Hunnicutt almost wins by default.

On top of those stellar four, we get a virtual constellation of glittering stars to support them. Ed Asner does villainy up right with the merciless Bart Jason but Christopher George is a revelation as Nelse McLeod, the second-best gunfighter in the area (after Cole Thornton, of course). Coming off as a more handsome, if no less nutty, Willem Dafoe, George is able to make McLeod more than a worthy adversary for Wayne’s Thornton. One of the best moments in the film is the part where McLeod watches in curiosity (and admiration) as the “unarmed” Mississippi steps up to one of McLeod’s men and demands retribution for a previous killing. George could have played the scene any number of ways but the quiet, slightly amused tone to his delivery and his obvious interest in seeing the outcome of the skirmish mark him as a much more complicated villain than simply another “black hat.” Likewise, the part where McLeod tells Thornton that “with two like us in the same batch, sooner or later we’d have to find out who’s faster” is a masterpiece of economy, giving us not only a little good old-fashioned foreshadowing but some great character development, as well. McLeod’s laid-back, if ruthless, attitude also leads to one of the film’s funniest, most tense moments as Thornton has McLeod exit the saloon first, in order to foil Pedro (John Gabriel) and Milt’s (Robert Donner) ambush attempt. His arch, slightly bemused delivery is pitch-perfect, going miles towards establishing his begrudging respect for Thornton.

Phenomenal acting aside, El Dorado is a marvel of filmmaking craft, which shouldn’t be surprising considering that Hawks produced and directed the film. A true film auteur in every sense of the word, Hawks was an amazingly adept filmmaker who, along with John Ford and Sergio Leone (go ahead and shoot me but I’ll be damned if Leone isn’t at least as responsible for the modern Western as his American counterparts) was pretty much responsible for the entire world’s view of the American West during the Golden Age of cinema. Here, Hawks is pretty much flawless: working with legendary cinematographer Harold Rosson, he’s created perhaps one of the finest evocations of the “mythical Wild West” ever put to film. El Dorado would actually be Rosson’s last film, capping off an astounding 51 year career that included such mainstays as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Duel in the Sun (1946), The Asphalt Jungle (1951), Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and The Bad Seed (1956). While the photography in El Dorado is absolutely gorgeous, full of bright, vibrant and crystal-clear images, Rosson’s use of lighting really makes everything stand out. Favoring hard, directional lighting, Rosson often produces shots that resemble German Expressionism which, when combined with the beautifully artificial sets, tends to create a real fairy tale atmosphere. It’s heady stuff and none more so than towards the end of the film, where Thornton, Harrah and Mississippi stalk the deserted streets of El Dorado, picking off McLeod’s men one by one.

One aspect of El Dorado that can’t be lauded enough is the excellent, witty script, courtesy of screenwriter Leigh Brackett (Rio Bravo, Hatari! (1961), Rio Lobo (1970), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980)). The script is tight and filler-free (at slightly over two hours long, it actually feels like about 90 minutes), full of great dialogue, one-liners and asides. One of my favorite parts of the movie is the scene where Mississippi finally meets Maudie, Cole’s kind-of/sort-of girlfriend. Up to that point, Cole had been pretty tight-lipped about his past, frustrating his young partner’s attempts to get to know him. After laying eyes on the comely Maudie, Mississippi lets out a low whistle: “Well, I found one thing out,” he tells Cole. “What’s that,” the laconic gunslinger snaps back. “You know a girl,” Mississippi replies, without missing a beat. It’s a great moment between Caan and Wayne and but one example of an exceedingly fun script.

In all honesty, I really can’t find enough good things to say about El Dorado: it’s been one of my all-time favorite films since I was a boy (this and Clint Eastwood’s Westerns were the only ones I truly loved, as a boy, and I really couldn’t stand John Wayne until I was much older) and my love and appreciation for the film have never waned. Not only is it my favorite Howard Hawks film, it’s also my favorite John Wayne film and one of my favorite Mitchum and Caan films, which actually says alot. When I went to re-watch the film for purposes of my recent “film festival,” I went into it with the goal of being as critical as possible: it’s often too easy for us to simply accept our childhood loves unconditionally, without giving them proper critical consideration. I was ready to tear the film to pieces: after all, I used to love Clerks (1994) and find it to be absolutely pointless as I approach forty years on Earth.

But then, of course, a funny thing happened: the more critical I became, the better the film held up. The movie looks and sounds gorgeous, is filled with instantly memorable characters, has tons of iconic set-pieces (like Mitchum and his crippled quarry in the saloon) and has some really insightful points to make about friendship and duty. Wayne, Mitchum, Caan and Hunnicut make a perfect team, Asner and George make perfect villains and Michele Carey is one of the most amazing spitfires to ever grace the silver screen. In short, El Dorado is an absolutely perfect film. If I had my way, everyone would be required to see it at least once, regardless of their feelings about Westerns, in general. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should. If you’ve seen it in the past, go ahead and watch it again. In many ways, El Dorado represents the very best that “film as entertainment” has to offer: it might not change your life but it may just make it a whole lot happier.

6/6/14 (Part One): All the Little Devils are Proud of Hell

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1970's cinema, Al Thomas, alcohol abuse, animal cruelty, animal massacre, Australia, Australian films, auteur theory, based on a book, bonded teacher, Bundanyabba, Chips Rafferty, cinema, civilized vs savage, depression, desolation, Doc Tydon, Donald Pleasence, drama, Film auteurs, film review, films, First Blood, gambling, Gary Bond, homoerotic tension, hunting, isolation, Jack Thompson, John Grant, John Meillon, kangaroo hunt, Kenneth Cook, male friendships, mining town, Movies, North Dallas Forty, obnoxious friends, Peter Whittle, Purgatory, repressed sexuality, school teacher, stranded, Sylvia Kay, Ted Kotcheff, the Outback, the Yabba, Tiboonda, Tim Hynes, Uncommon Valor, urban vs rural, Wake in Fright, wasteland

Many times, we discuss vacations in terms of “getting away from it all.” The presumption, obviously, is that we’re getting away from all of the tedious, mundane and unpleasant aspects of our daily lives: all of the annoying things like 9-5 jobs, chores, responsibilities and anonymous authority figures. People will hike deep into the woods, sail away to the middle of the ocean and climb the tallest mountains possible, all in the pursuit of “getting away from it all” and finding some internal serenity. In a day and age where we all seem to be alarmingly “plugged in” almost 24 hours/day, there’s something not only attractive but downright necessary about dialing everything back to a more simple level: just “us” and nature, our phones on silent and our brains turned off. By “getting away from it all,” we’re actually hoping to get back to ourselves, that core version that exists below the commitments of civilized society.

But what if we went so far away from polite society that we ended up in an altogether darker place? What if our quest for internal peace and discovery of the self led us not to personal evolution but to devolution? Is it possible to embrace our primitive, savage ids so much that we become nothing but flesh-sacks for volcanic, primal emotions like lust, hate, fear and the need to inflict pain? Getting away from the everyday bullshit of polite society is a noble goal but it leads to a dangerously slippery slope: once we’ve begun to accept a more primal, savage lifestyle, we automatically become at odds with the rest of the “civilized” world. As Nietzsche so eloquently put it, “When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” In Ted Kotcheff’s disturbing Wake in Fright (1971), we get the distinctly perverse pleasure of witnessing someone not only stare into the abyss but get consumed and shat out the other end.

It’s Christmas vacation for bonded school teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) and he eagerly closes the doors on his one-room schoolhouse in the tiny Outback town of Tiboonda, looking forward to his next six weeks of leisure. He’s heading for the bright lights of Sidney but must take a train to the small mining town of Bundanyabba in order to catch his flight. Ostensibly only in town for the evening, John takes a rather dim view of the hard-drinking, overly “friendly” locals: their earthy behavior is at decided odds with his more “civilized” big-city upbringing. As a local tells him, however, the “Yabba” is actually the best place in Australia: no one cares where you are or where you come from, as long as you’re a “good bloke”. John meets one of these “good blokes” in the person of Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty), a local state trooper who proceeds to buy him one beer after the other at a local pub. When John complains that he’s hungry and would rather eat than drink, Jock thinks for a moment and does the most sensible thing: he takes John to a different bar so that he can order a steak along with the booze. “Best dollar you’ll ever spend,” Jock reckons, as he leaves John in the less than capable hands of local sawbones Doc Tydon (Donald Pleaseance).

Tydon is an amazing character, a slovenly, feral, ridiculously self-assured train-wreck who deflates the previously positive affirmations of the Yabba with the ominous declaration that “all the little devils are proud of Hell.” It’s here that John also gets introduced to the backroom gambling game of two-up, which involves betting on the flipping of a pair of coins. In a classic example of the fatal flaw, John initially scoofs at the game, before becoming intrigued, betting and winning. Unable to leave well enough alone, John continues to bet (and win), all with the hope of earning the $1000 bond necessary to buy his way out of Tiboonda and end his perceived servitude. He displays an amazing streak of luck, all the way up to the point where he loses all of his money. And, just like that, John’s one-night stay in the Yabba is about to turn into a whole lot more.

Unable to pay for his flight, John watches helplessly the next morning as it flies away overhead. He visits the local labor exchange but it’s closed: the only place that actually seems open is the bar (of course) and John drags himself there to spend his final coins on some sweet, if temporary, escape. Once there, John meets Tim Hynes (Al Thomas), another “good bloke” who buys him multiple drinks (after shouting down John’s initial protests) and takes him home to drink some more (pretty much the official past-time of the Yabba). Once there, John meets Tim’s strange daughter, Janette (Sylvia Kay), who mopes around silently while John and Tim continue to drink until they pass out, at which point they’re roused by Tim’s obnoxious friends, Dick (Jack Thompson) and Joe (Peter Whittle) for more drunken debauchery. After Doc Tydon shows up, Janette sneaks the blotto John away for a little drunken making out session, although his contribution to things pretty much begins and ends with puking on her. When John passes out, he wakes up in the Doc’s absolutely filthy pigsty of a home, a place that looks just like the dreadful Turkish prison in Midnight Express (1978). This leads to more drinking, of course (as Tydon tells him, Yabba water is only for washing, not drinking), while leads to more debauchery which leads to an absolutely horrifying kangaroo hunt, drunken rampage and possible rape. As John gets further and further away from his former gentle “civilized” nature, he finds himself in a shadowy world where the only diversions from a brutally bleak life are drinking, fucking, killing, fighting and destroying. Will John be able to pull himself out before he’s lost forever? Or will he end up just another permanent resident of the Yabba? And, in the end, can anyone ever really leave the Yabba?

It’s quite possible for a film to be both utterly intriguing and fairly repellent and Wake in Fright is certainly both of those things. On a purely narrative level, the film makes imperfect sense, existing somewhere between a fever dream and the French New Wave. Thanks to the editing style, which helps to heighten the sense of disorientation, it’s often difficult to establish continuity or, in some cases, even establish quite what’s going on. More often than not, the film is aggressively unpleasant: ‘roo hunt notwithstanding (and we’ll address that shortly), there’s a groddy, dirty edge to everything that makes a heady stew when combined with the sense of vast, open isolation and personal fatalism. The Yabba definitely appears to be some sort of a stand-in for Purgatory (or perhaps Hell, depending on how you look at it) and any satisfaction wrung from watching poor John Grant descend into its depths is grim, indeed. It’s not so much that John is a really good guy: he seems like a perfectly average guy, which makes his destruction, somehow, more upsetting. We can cheer if a “bad guy” gets his come-uppance and smirk when an unnaturally pure “white knight” fails. When a “normal” person fails, however, especially if they fail thanks to essentially good reasons (John keeps betting because he wants to get out of Tiboonda so he can be reunited with his girlfriend in Sidney), it hits a bit closer to home. John could be any of us, under the right circumstances: his degradation and destruction could be ours.

Despite how unpleasant the film ends up being, it’s a consistently fascinating film, thanks in no small part to the exceptional cast and stellar filmmaking. Donald Pleaseance, in particular, is absolutely amazing: Doc Tydon is the id in flesh and Pleaseance doesn’t so much chew the scenery as immediately become the center of any scene he’s in. Whether standing on his head while drinking a beer, cutting the balls off a dead kangaroo, graphically describing his sex life with Janette or engaging in a little drunken, homoerotic semi-nude wrestling with John, Doc Tydon is a ferociously alive, unrepentant, hedonist. More animal than man, Tydon may actually be the Yabba, a living personification of this hard-scrabble area that grinds men into pulp in the mines and pours the remains straight into the bars. I could practically smell Tydon’s stench through the screen, thanks to Pleaseance’s firebrand performance, and that’s no small compliment.

Gary Bond is good as John Grant but there’s not a whole lot required of his character: he’s a strictly reactive force and spends more time wobbling about in a state of semi-coherence than actually developing in any given direction. While it’s easy to empathize with John, it’s difficult to truly like the guy: he’s given the opportunity to climb out of the hole on multiple occasions but always seems to choose the path of least resistance (which, of course, is usually the worst path). Unlike Tydon, John takes no pleasure in his debauchery: as such, he tends to vacillate between confusion and moral agony.

From a filmmaking standpoint, Wake in Fright is exquisitely crafted. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and shows off the vast, epic emptiness of the Outback to great effect. The opening shot, a slowly revolving wide-shot that shows us the entire, tiny emptiness of Tiboonda in one, smooth 360-degree motion, is an amazing mood setter. Equally impressive is the score, which manages to swing from lighter to oppressive on the drop of a hat: the weird, eerie “sci-fi” theramins that kick in after John loses all of his money and begins his descent are a really nice touch, as are the droning tones that inform the latter half of the score. The score is a perfect example of subtly building atmosphere and mood without resorting to overly obvious musical stingers.

Despite all of the things to recommend here, I must admit that I didn’t really care for Wake in Fright. The film left me cold, which isn’t necessarily a problem, but it also left me queasy on many occasions, which is a more significant issue. One of the main reasons for this, although certainly not the only reason, is the astoundingly awful scene where Tim, Joe, Dick and the Doc take John out kangaroo hunting. I’d heard rumors about this scene, which apparently features actual footage from a real kangaroo hunt, but nothing I imagined could have prepared me for the actual film. The closest thing I can compare the hunt to would be parts of Pier Pasolini’s Salo (1977) or the disgusting animal footage in Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1985). As with those films, I will freely admit to looking away from the screen at times: there’s simply no way that anyone who loves animals (and I’m pretty much a fanatic) could watch the wholesale kangaroo butchery without dying a little inside. This is compounded with a bit (I’m assuming staged but only because I would never want to entertain the alternative) where John Grant graphically stabs a wounded baby kangaroo to death, while the guys cheer him on, hooting and hollering. Wake in Fright is not, technically speaking, a horror film but the kangaroo hunt is easily the most horrific thing that I believe I’ve seen in some 30 years of movie watching…and that says a lot.

Ultimately, I’m not sure whether to recommend Wake in Fright or not. The film will certainly not be for everyone and I can see quite a few people turning it off midway through (for better or worse, the ‘roo hunt really does draw a line in the sand). There was also much about the film that still mystifies me, including the question of what, exactly, happened between John and the Doc. As an important piece of Australia’s New Wave, Wake in Fright certainly bears discussion with films like Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and The Last Wave (1977), although I’m less fond of it than either of those films. In certain ways, parts of Wake in Fright even prefigure modern-day Aussie exports like Wolf Creek 2 (2013), which features its own variation on the kangaroo slaughter. Australia has always had a vibrant and fascinating film industry and astute viewers could do worse than rummage through their 1970’s back catalog. That being said, Wake in Fright is pretty strong stuff and I can’t honestly see myself revisiting it anytime soon. The Yabba might be an interesting place to visit but I sure as hell don’t wanna live there.