3/5/15: Hail To the Freaks

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bands, Best of 2014, bittersweet, Captain Beefheart, Carla Azar, Chris Sievey, cinema, co-writers, dark comedies, disguises, Domhnall Gleeson, dramas, dysfunctional family, entertainment community, experimental music, fame, favorite films, film reviews, films, foreign films, François Civil, Frank, Frank Sidebottom, Frank Zappa, Hayley Derryberry, hidden identities, inspired by true events, Irish films, James Mather, Jon Ronson, Leonard Abrahamson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, mainstream vs counter culture, masks, mental illness, Michael Fassbender, Movies, music-based films, musicians, outsider art, outsiders, Peter Straughan, pop music, Scoot McNairy, Shane O'Brien, social media, Stephen Rennicks, voice-over narration, Wes Anderson

Do true musicians create for themselves, alone, or is there always some sort of audience in mind? It’s a question that’s probably plagued the entertainment community since the first humans discovered that banging rocks in syncopated fashion caused people to get up, get down and get a little crazy. As music gradually moved from a pure art form into a commodity as readily quantifiable as real estate holdings, the question has become even more prescient: where, exactly, is the dividing line between art and product?

Is it even possible for musicians to create purely for the sake of creativity or is a marketing angle necessary regardless of how “experimental” or “outre” you are? Would past geniuses like Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart or Einstürzende Neubauten even be able to get a foothold in our current musical climate or would they be instantly written off and discarded for being too “uncommercial” or “difficult to sell”? And what, exactly, does it say about us if everything nowadays must come with a price tag? Art for art’s sake? Not on our watch, bub!

Leonard Abrahamson’s Frank (2014) takes a look at some of these questions, although it’s not as interested in the answers as it is in positing more questions: To whom, exactly, does an artist’s music belong? Does it belong exclusively to that artist? To their fans? Their critics? The world at large? Is it more important to stay true to one’s “vision” and languish in obscurity or is compromise necessary in order to insure that at least some part of an artist’s meaning makes it out, even in an unintended form? What responsibility do musicians have towards their fans and vice versa? Do the wants and desires of the masses outweigh and override the needs of the individual artist? And, perhaps most importantly: what responsibility do audiences owe severely “damaged” artists? If the very act of creating leads to mental distress for the musician, is it proper (or even moral) for the rest of us to consume said product?

Loosely based on Jon Ronson’s book about his tenure with Frank Sidebottom (aka Chris Sievey) in the ’80s, Abrahamson’s film combines elements of the enigmatic performance artist (known for wearing a giant, fake head at all times) with aspects of Captain Beefheart’s eclectic, “everything and the kitchen sink” recording process to come up with the perfect outsider artist. By updating the action to the present day, Frank also allows for some rather piercing insight into the ways in which things like social media help to shed light on previously unknown performers, for better or (in the this case) much worse. Through it all, however, one thought remains clear over all others: some people are just out of step with their era, regardless of what era that happens to be.

Our entry into the story is young Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), an aspiring singer-songwriter-keyboardist who still lives with his parents, is constantly on Twitter and seems to spend the majority of his time walking around, writing spontaneous songs about any and everything he sees. As luck would have it, Jon lands a gig with a touring band after their keyboardist, Lucas (Shane O’Brien) tries to drown himself in the sea. The band’s name is unpronounceable, their music sounds like an atonal, experimental jam (including theremin!) and their frontman, Frank (Michael Fassbender) wears a giant paper-mache head as he rants, raves and performs what seems to be some sort of stream-of-conscious manifesto. Needless to say, Jon is fascinated by the group and thrilled when he gets the call to join them, full-time, as their new keyboardist.

Once in the band, Jon finds himself smack dab in the middle of a fairly unique group of individuals: Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the theremin player, is almost impossibly angry and seems to hate Jon with absolute zeal; Don (Scoot McNairy), Frank’s right-hand man, spent time in a mental hospital and used to “fuck mannequins”; Baraque (François Civil) and Nana (Carla Azar) don’t speak English and dress as if they just stepped out of a French New Wave film. And Frank…oh, my…Frank. Our titular fellow is a complete mystery, a soft-spoken, well-reasoned musical prodigy who just happens to operate on a completely different wavelength from the rest of the world. His perception of “normal” is so skewed that when Jon asks him for a more “mainstream” song,at one point, his contribution still sounds like some form of mutant Martian national anthem.

Things go from “absurd” to “very difficult” in no time flat after the group convenes in an isolated cabin (on a deserted island, to boot) in order to record their album. As Jon tries to push the group into a more “mainstream” direction, Clara and the others push back with all their might: only Frank seems bemused enough to want to give it a shot. Frank’s idea of “normal,” however, is about as abnormal as it gets and Jon begins to dread the group’s upcoming performance at a South By Southwest music showcase: will Frank’s decidedly cracked psyche be able to handle not only the trip to America but the exposure to a (presumably) new audience or will Clara need to make good on her promise to stab Jon if he “fucks up America for them?” As their situation gets stranger, more strained and more precarious, Jon will gradually come to realize that some artists really are better off in the margins, away from the blinding-white spotlight of public perception.

In every way possible, Leonard Abrahamson’s Frank is a love letter to the weirdos, the freaks and the dreamers of our world, those individuals who follow their own drummer and, in the process, create so much indelible, amazing art for the rest of us to enjoy, puzzle over, debate, love and hate. Operating within a production style that handily recalls that other great lover of the misfits, Wes Anderson, Frank is a colorful, quirky, odd and utterly endearing film, packed with great performances and some nicely nuanced commentary about this crazy era we find ourselves in.

As a biopic of the original Frank Sidebottom, it’s difficult to gauge how well Frank hits its mark: as someone who’s only peripherally aware of the Sidebottom character, it’s pretty impossible for me to determine how “accurate” any of this is. On the other hand, I’m familiar enough with outre artists like Captain Beefheart to recognize bits and pieces of their history in the film, leading me to believe this is more of a melange than anything approaching a straight-forward biography. If anything, I’m sure that the character of Frank Sidebottom provided the filmmakers with a readily identifiable outside artist to reference, as well as giving the film its visual hook (that big, fake head is pretty unforgettable, after all).

By updating the action to the present day, Abrahamson, Ronson and co-writer Peter Straughan are able to make plenty of astute observations about the ways in which social media help to fuel (or, in some cases, create) a performer’s career. Despite never playing a single gig in the U.S., Frank and the others (supposedly) have a ready-made audience waiting for them, thanks to Jon’s numerous Twitter and Youtube updates on the band’s recording process. It doesn’t matter that their music is highly experimental and unlikely to appeal to the “average” music festival fan: social media hype turns everything into an “event,” even if for only a minute or two. As Jon comes to discover, however, interest in “hype” is much different from actual interest in something: hype is what gets bodies in the seats but it’s no guarantee that they’ll stay there.

There’s also plenty of interesting discussions on the dangers of exposing “vulnerable” artists to a larger, uncaring audience. As we come to know Frank better, it’s painfully obvious that he’s a deeply troubled, possible mentally disturbed, individual.  This, of course, doesn’t stop Jon from trying to expose him to a larger audience: as a “true fan,” Jon feels that he has an obligation to expose his heroes to as many people as possible. As a similarly hardcore fan of music, I know exactly what he’s feeling: if I had a penny for every time I tried to expose someone to challenging, experimental or “difficult” music, I’d own most of the planet’s uninhabited islands, by this point.

While there are plenty of great performances in the film (Gyllenhaal and McNairy are particularly great), they all tend to orbit around Gleeson and Fassbender’s twin planetary spheres. Gleeson is quickly establishing himself as one of this generation’s finest actors, as handily capable of portraying sweet naivety as he is petulant bullheadedness. In other hands, Jon might have come out a much different character: too much “nice” and he’s a lunk-headed bit of stage property…too much avarice and he’s an unrepentant creep. In Glesson’s hands, however, Jon is nothing if not complex: we come to understand not only his over-riding desire for fame and recognition, at any cost, but also his genuine love and affection for Frank and his band. The last thing that Jon would ever want to do is destroy the group that he loves so much which, ironically, makes his inevitable destruction of said band so genuinely sad.

For his part, Fassbender works wonders with just his voice and body language: Frank’s fake head could have come across as just another gimmick but there’s never the sense that Fassbender takes the performance as anything less than deadly serious. It would have been incredibly easy to turn Frank into a childish symbol of innocence and purity but Fassbender is always able to keep the character fully grounded, even during the film’s more whimsical moments. For as often as the film builds genuine laughs and humor from the character of Frank, it just as often frames him in a poignant, bittersweet way that never fails to remind us of his ultimate situation: this isn’t just a quirky weirdo…this is a real, damaged individual whose unblinking mask hides a wealth of fear, insanity, confusion and sorrow. While Fassbinder has been a reliable presence in films for a good decade, at this point, Frank is one of his most subtle, vibrant creations yet. The moment where we finally see him, sans mask, is a real gut-punch and Fassbender deserves much of the credit for that.

Frank is a helluva film, no two ways about it. While there’s plenty of humor here (the scenes where the band tries to record their album are all great, as are any of the ones where Clara threatens to commit grievous bodily injury to Jon), the film has a solid emotional core that leads to some incredibly powerful moments. By the time we get to the hushed, intimate finale that features a band reunion in a scrappy pool hall, it’s pretty obvious that Frank is an exceptional piece of filmcraft. Whether you love music, love outsiders, love a rags-to-riches-to-rags story or just love good films, Frank should be right up your alley.

If nothing else, the film should give anyone pause for thought whenever they consider their favorite “unknown” artist: we might want the whole world to celebrate them, just like we do…but what would they actually want? Chances are, if they’re anything like Frank, they just want the chance to live their lives, in their world, under their own terms.

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.

10/31/14 (Part Four): All Hail the Pumpkin King!

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31 Days of Halloween, A Christmas Story, Alberto Ghisi, Anna Paquin, anthology films, Brett Kelly, Brian Cox, Britt McKillip, cinema, Connor Levins, cult classic, cult films, Dylan Baker, father-son relationships, favorite films, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, Glen MacPherson, Halloween, Halloween night, Halloween traditions, holiday classics, horror, horror films, Isabelle Deluce, Jean-Luc Bilodeau, kids in peril, Lauren Lee Smith, Leslie Bibb, long-delayed films, Mark Freeborn, Michael Dougherty, Moneca Delain, Monsters, Movies, Peter Greenaway, Pulp Fiction, Quinn Lord, Rochelle Aytes, Sam, Samm Todd, serial killers, Tahmoh Penikett, Tony Wohlgemuth, Trick 'r Treat, werewolves, Wes Anderson, writer-director, zombies

What is the true meaning of Halloween? I don’t mean the historical origins, mind you: we could sit and debate pagan ceremonies, harvest festivals, etc…til the cows come home and still not get any closer to the actual answer. As we should all know by now, holidays have a way of shedding their original meanings over time, of morphing into decidedly different entities than they once were. Just as the concept of Christmas has, over time, become more secular/commercial and increasingly divorced from its religious origins, so, too, has the concept of Halloween lost much of its pagan origins and become something much more universal.

But none of this answers the original question: what, exactly, is the true meaning of Halloween? If I may be so bold, I think that I have the answer. Halloween is ghosts and curses, trick or treating and costumes. It’s parties, pranks, candy, the color orange and the long, slow death of Fall. Halloween is the one time of the year where everyone in the world, horror fans and neophytes alike, relish every possible opportunity to scare themselves senseless. Halloween is about ancient traditions, scary movies and jack-o’-lanterns.  It’s about becoming someone/thing other than what you are, if only for a night. Halloween is all about having fun…but it’s also about the realization that death is only ever a stone’s throw away, hiding off in the shadows to pounce on the unwary. What is Halloween? Halloween is writer-director Michael Dougherty’s flawless Trick ‘r Treat (2007), a film that manages to encompass everything great and terrible about the holiday into one neat little package. Think of Trick ‘r Treat as the equivalent to A Christmas Story (1983), one of those films that just sums up a time of year so perfectly that you can’t imagine celebrating without it.

Structurally, Trick ‘r Treat is an anthology film, albeit one more like Pulp Fiction (1994) than Creepshow (1982): rather than feature several separate stories, one after the other, all of the tales in Trick ‘r Treat are interwoven together. Characters from one story appear in the periphery of other segments: incidents seen from one angle are given a 360-view once we’re privy to all the details. The effect, quite frankly, is stunning: Dougherty creates such a unified vision that Trick ‘r Treat ends up being one of the most three-dimensional horror films ever…we really get to know the characters involved because we see so many different facets of them. The one constant that unites it all? The ever-present specter of Halloween and the diminutive, instantly classic presence of Sam, one of the greatest modern horror creations in recent memory.

Sam, clad in what appears to be a scarecrow’s garb, complete with burlap-sack mask, flits into and out of each of the film’s various stories. The stories themselves, ranging from a young woman’s (Anna Paquin) sexual awakening to the tragic story of a school bus full of drowned children, are familiar but are all given unique twists and turns courtesy of Dougherty’s exceptional script. Sam, the very embodiment of the holiday, serves a variety of roles throughout the film: avenging angel, detached observer, gleeful participant, mischievous prankster, cold-blooded killer.  We never know quite when or where he’ll pop up next but pop up, he always does, ready with a rakish tilt of the head and that terrifying lollipop-knife of his.

I mentioned earlier that Trick ‘r Treat is a flawless film and I stand by that bold admission: there’s absolutely nothing about the film that ever takes me out of it for even a moment and each viewing ends with the desire to start the whole thing over. The acting…the filmmaking…the script…even the opening credits, styled like an old EC Comic, ala Creepshow…are all absolutely perfect. It’s quite handily become one of my favorite films and is one of the few movies that I can unequivocally recommend to anyone, regardless of individual tastes: if you like movies, you will like Trick ‘r Treat…I guarantee it, as Justin Wilson used to say.

From a filmmaking standpoint, Trick ‘r Treat is absolutely gorgeous and brilliantly made: the production design and art direction (by Mark Freeborn and Tony Wohlgemuth) are simply stunning, especially in eye-popping scenes like the yard full of jack-o’-lanterns or the ridiculously creepy scene where the kids find the half-submerged school bus. Glen MacPherson’s cinematography is nothing less than beautiful, giving the film a feel that’s pitched halfway between Wes Anderson and Sam Raimi. Truth be told, Trick ‘r Treat’s entire mis en scene reminds me of Anderson’s work (or, perhaps, even the work of legendary filmmaker Peter Greenaway): every scene and shot is so immaculately composed that it almost feels as if one has stepped into a perfect, miniature diorama.

Ultimately, there’s not a whole lot more for me to say about the film: I love it unconditionally and that’s pretty much all there is to it. Prior to seeing Trick ‘r Treat (which was inexplicably dumped straight-to-DVD after being delayed for years), I had always considered Carpenter’s classic Halloween (1974) to be the perfect representation of the season. There’s so much care and craft in Dougherty’s feature-debut, however, such a complete and genuine love for all things Halloween, that it’s impossible not to see Trick ‘r Treat as the ultimate Halloween film, bar none.

What is Halloween? Quite simply, Halloween is Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat: all hail the Pumpkin King and long may He reign!

4/26/14: To Project and Swerve

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absurdist, Arden Myrin, auteur theory, bad cops, Best of 2013, black comedies, cinema, comedies, cops, cops behaving badly, dark comedies, Eric Judor, Eric Roberts, Eric Wareheim, favorite films, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, French cinema, French films, Grace Zabriskie, Harmony Korine, Marilyn Manson, Mark Burnham, Movies, Mr. Oizo, Officer de Luca, Officer Duke, Officer Holmes, Officer Rough, Quentin Dupieux, Ray Wise, Rubber, Steve Little, surreal, Terry Gilliam, Tim & Eric, Wes Anderson, Wrong, Wrong Cops

Quentin Dupieux gets me. He really does. If any filmmaker operating in our modern age can really be tuned in to my bizarre little wave-length, Dupieux is definitely it. While I may hold Refn and Wheatley in the highest regard, never having seen one of their films that I haven’t adored, Dupieux is the crackpot auteur who seems to view the world with my eyes. Beginning with Rubber (2010), the French writer/director/musician (he’s also Mr. Oizo, the French electro artist) has seen fit to depict a world that’s one part Lynchian suburb, one part dystopic wasteland and one part absurdist stage play. While 2012’s brain-melting Wrong serves to set-up the bizarre wonderland that’s finally unleashed in Wrong Cops, Dupieux’s newest is a completely stand-alone triumph, an absurdist nightmare that manages to be both hilarious and disturbing. Basically, Dupieux is up to his old tricks.

Whereas Wrong told a more linear, complex but, essentially, traditional (or as traditional as Dupieux can get) narrative, Wrong Cops functions more as a bat-shit crazy Pulp Fiction, wherein we are introduced to a disparate collection of characters who we then follow about as their stories eventually intertwine. In the case of Wrong Cops, we’re introduced to the titular characters, a ragtag collection of “law enforcement” personnel that are sort of like Police Academy filtered through It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, by way of Harmony Korine. We have Officer Duke (Mark Burnham), who has sex with transsexual prostitutes, delivers the pot he sells to locals by stuffing it in dead rats, carts around a “75% dead” body in his trunk and needlessly hassles a poor teen nerd who just wants to listen to his headphones (Marilyn Manson, in a role that must, literally, be seen to be believed…and yes…he is playing a teenage boy). We get Officer de Luca (Eric Wareheim), who holds yoga students at gunpoint in order to get their phone numbers and his partner, Officer Holmes (Arden Myrin), who uses her young son as bag-man in a money-drop involving the blackmail of a fellow cop. Said fellow cop, Officer Sunshine (Steve Little), has an active side-career in law enforcement-themed gay porn, a business venture which he’s managed to successfully hide from his adoring wife and daughter. Meanwhile, Officer Rough (Eric Judor), is just trying to make the best damn dance track that he can. There’s something missing, however, and Rough just can’t quite put his finger on it. Good thing that the “75% dead” guy (Daniel Quinn) has a thing for beats, though: with a little luck, he may just be able to give the cut the extra oomph it needs to secure Officer Rough a meeting with a top record exec. That is, of course, if he doesn’t bleed to death first. Throw in Eric Roberts as Duke’s drug supplier and Ray Wise as the group “who gives a shit” Captain and you got yahtzee, folks!

Like all of Dupieux’s films, Wrong Cops is easier (and better) experienced then explained. He has a particular skill with enveloping viewers completely within the reality of his films, something that Wes Anderson and Harmony Korine are both experts at. There’s never a point in the film, regardless of how strange, random or absurd, where the viewer is taken out of Dupieux’s reality: for my money, it’s one of the most impressive displays of world-building I’ve seen this year. The film has a sun-bleached, washed-out color palette and tone that recalls not only Rubber but, almost subliminally, Alex Cox’s outsider classic Repo Man (1984). I actually see several parallels with Repo Man in this film, not least of which is the almost mundane way in which the characters all deal with the strangeness massed around them. There was definitely this feel in Dupieux’s previous film, Wrong, but that movie was also a much more explicitly fantasy/sci-fi oriented project, as was Rubber. Wrong Cops, by contrast, is set wholly within a world that could, technically, be ours, albeit one in which everything was tweaked a few degrees…a world in which everything was just a little wrong, as it were.

Part of the joy with Wrong Cops, similar to watching exploitation films or anything by Lloyd Kaufman, is seeing just how bad things will get. As with everything else, Wrong Cops doesn’t disappoint on this count: things start bad and get steadily worse until the whole thing becomes a roaring tsunami of bad taste, bad choices, bad behavior and bad, bad people. Truth be told, there isn’t a single character in the film that you can truly “root” for, not one person who passes the sniff test as a “hero.” We spend the most time with Duke but he’s the furthest thing we’d want from a protector. Ditto Officers de Luca and Holmes, a potential sexual assailant, on the one hand, and a cop so dirty that she even “feeds” on her own peers, on the other. The closest we get to an “innocent” cop in the film is Rough who wins by default: he doesn’t really do anything terrible (outside of some hanky-panky with his neighbor’s married wife, that is) but he also doesn’t lift a finger to help anyone, least of all the poor dying guy sitting in his living room.

Films like Wrong Cops walk a very fine line: on one hand, they only work spectacularly well if they push the envelope as far as it will go. On the other hand, however, there a definite difference between crudity with a point (see Blazing Saddles) and crude-for-its-own-sake (see pretty much any Troma film). Earlier this year, I lambasted The Comedy, a hateful hipster-skewering/lauding film that also featured Eric Wareheim in a prominent role. In that case, I was never sure which side of the issue the filmmakers were actually on: more often than not, The Comedy seemed to be celebrating their terrible behavior, while also trying to half-heartedly tsk tsk it. There’s no such hemming and hawing in Dupieux’s film, however: he’s all-in on the various officers terrible behavior but he makes no bones about what unrepentant assholes these people are. There’s nothing to look up to, here, no sense of cool cats thumbing their noses at a square world: these people are part of the problem, not any part of the solution, and Dupieux knows it. He also, however, knows that they are a seriously funny bunch of misanthropes (similar to that lovable bunch of apes in It’s Always Sunny) and gives them plenty of room to work their funny magic.

And the film is funny. Very funny. Unlike the ultra-dry, high-concept Rubber or the wry, tricky Wrong, Wrong Cops is all loud, belching, farting id, the Sam Kinison to the previous films George Carlin. Perhaps this speaks more to my sense of humor than anything else (remember…Dupieux gets me) but I laughed my way through the entire film. Hard. There are so many great scenes in the film that picking out favorites is a little hard but there’s stuff that still makes me crack up, even as I type it now: Eric Wareheim’s hair getting blown back by a tornado of pepper spray from a decidedly bored wannabe “victim”; Mark Burnham tossing a drug-filled rat onto a diner counter like it was no big deal; Officers de Luca and Holmes walking into a murder scene and proceeding to raid the fridge, featuring the priceless exchange, “Aren’t you going to ask any questions?” “I do have a question: how old is this mozzarella?”; the record executive dismissing Officer Rough’s efforts with the revelation that he doesn’t think “anyone’s going to want to listen to music from a black, one-eyed, slightly monstrous DJ.” Wrong Cops is like a bottomless treasure chest, constantly spewing forth glittering new comedic jewels at frequent intervals.

The acting, across the board, is dead on. All of the cops are pretty much perfect but there isn’t a single actor/character in the film that feels off, regardless of how much/little screen time they get. Marilyn Manson, in particular, is utterly fantastic: he plays the part of David Dolores Frank with absolutely zero hint of his more famous day job and the result is a pretty realistic portrait of a hassled teen. It’s a brilliant, metaphysical move that should have been nothing more than silly sight gag (oh look: the Antichrist Superstar is wearing jeans and a t-shirt) but plays like an honest-to-god directorial choice. This, in a nutshell, seems to sum up the Dupieux method: treat everything, regardless of how absurd or meaningless, with the utmost respect. Dupieux may be a court jester but he’s a smart one, perhaps as smart as Terry Gilliam, in his own way.

As previously mentioned, the film looks great and the sparse, dry electro score compliments everything perfectly. Truth be told, I just can’t find anything to really dun the film for: if this was a baseball game, this would have been a home run, no questions about it. As such, I’m pretty much left with just deciding where the film fits into Dupieux’s existing oeuvre. I actually like it quite a bit more than Rubber, which is easily the most “difficult” film in Dupieux’s catalog, but not quite as much as Wrong. While Wrong Cops is a much funnier film than its predecessor, I also think it’s a slightly smaller film: Wrong was working with some truly mind-blowing concepts and metaphysics, whereas Wrong Cops is a peek into an insane world. By the time Ray Wise showed up in a role that couldn’t help but remind me of his turn as Satan in Reaper, I had begun to wonder whether Dupieux’s whole point was to plop us down into a kind of purgatory while his various characters continued their slow shuffle into Hell.

A sentient tire…a talking dog…a collection of the worst police officers in history…if there’s a method to Quentin Dupieux’s exquisite madness, I’ve yet to see it. This, of course, is what makes waiting for his next film so excruciating. At this rate, the next movie could, literally, be absolutely anything under the sun. That’s kind of terrifying, if you think about it, but that’s also pretty damn exhilarating. It’s what creativity should always be. It’s what the movies should always be. It’s why I’m still here…and it’s why you should be, too.

4/23/14: When Fear is Good

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A Fantastic Fear of Everything, Alex de la Iglesia, Amara Karan, based on a short story, British comedies, British films, Bruce Robinson, Bunny and the Bull, Burke & Hare, childhood fears, Chris Hopewell, cinema, Clare Higgins, comedies, crime novelists, Crispian Mills, Decades of Death, Dr. Friedkin, eyeballs, fear, film reviews, films, Guy Ritchie, Hanoi Handshake Killer, Harold the Hedgehog, Hayley Mills, horror-comedies, I Sell the Dead, Kerry Shale, Kula Shaker, laundromats, Movies, paranoia, Paul Freeman, Quentin Tarantino, serial killers, SImon Pegg, Terry Gilliam, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Final Countdown, The Hendon Ogre, Time Bandits, voice-over narration, Wes Anderson, Withnail and I

There’s something about an “everything including the kitchen sink” approach to filmmaking that’s always appealed to me. Perhaps it was because Time Bandits (1981) and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) were two of my favorite films growing up and neither of those films understood the words “restraint” or “over-indulgence.” Perhaps it’s because I developed an early love for Tarantino and Ritchie’s hyperkinetic, restless bullet-ballets: the former contorted his traditional narratives into fantastic new balloon animals while the latter never met a camera-angle, editing trick or musical cue that he didn’t love. When a filmmaker throws everything at the screen, and it sticks, the results can be some of the most thrilling, eye-popping cinema I’ve ever seen. I never tire of Wes Anderson’s immaculate miniatures-writ-large and if Alex de la Iglesia can sometimes be the model of restraint, he’s more often the device for delivering machine-gun-armed circus clowns and silver-bodypaint-adorned Jesus bankrobbers. I love small, quiet, subtle films, especially horror films, but it’s no coincidence that three of my favorite films of the past decade have been I Sell the Dead (2008), Bunny and the Bull (2009) and Burke and Hare (2010), all three of which throw so much material/effects/multi-media/razzle-dazzle at the audience that they’re almost endurance matches. While Crispian Mills debut film A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012) may not be quite as perfect as the aforementioned classics, it’s just close enough to deserve a place with the pack.

After a truly dynamic animated opening sequence, we’re introduced to our hero, Jack (Simon Pegg), a children’s author who has decided to expand his horizons with a book about serial killers. Unfortunately for poor Jack, he has a tendency to be…well…afraid of everything and he quickly begins to obsesses about the various Victorian slashers, such as The Hendon Ogre and Crippen, that he researches. Even worse, he begins to think that insidious killers are actually after him, leading him to superglue a large kitchen knife to his hand. After his long-suffering agent gets Jack a meeting with the mysterious Harvey Humphries (Kerry Shale), a film producer interested in turning his research on serial killers into a movie, Jack must get over his intense agoraphobia and prepare to actually leave his house. After his usual laundry method (washing in the sink, drying in the oven) goes horribly awry, Jack must venture out to that most dreaded of public places: the laundromat. Not only have laundromats always been at the secret center of Jack’s endless phobias but there’s also a new killer nicknamed The Hanoi Handshake Killer running around. As Jack leaves his home, knife glued to hand, he must come to grips with the source of his childhood trauma, solve a local mystery and figure out whether he wants to stick with the hedgehog that made him famous or follow his dreams into the true-crime stories that haunt his dreams. Along the way, he might just find love. He also might get into an argument with a serial killer about the validity of The Final Countdown and hair metal vs gangsta rap, of course, but he definitely might find love.

Although it may seem overly reductive, perhaps the best “easy” descriptor of A Fantastic Fear of Everything would be Wes Anderson directing a Terry Gilliam film as envisioned by Guy Ritchie.   From the opening credit sequence to the closing one, AFFOE never sits still, spinning endlessly like a perpetual motion machine. Director/writer Mills (the son of actress Hayley Mills and member of Brit-rock band Kula Shaker), along with cinematographer Simon Chaudoir, have managed to craft a film that both visually and aurally inventive, hyperkinetic and fast-paced, yet inherently human and character-driven. This is no mean feat when there’s this much stuff flying around. At various points, we get super-stylized camera shots (the opening close-up of Pegg’s eye, which rotates out to make it seem as if he’s on the floor, yet is finally revealed to him by the wall, is nothing short of genius), nifty animated sequences (the paper-doll murder explanation is super cool and the claymation Harold the Hedgehog sequence is good enough to be its own short) and inventive use of sound (there’s a great moment where the sound begins loud and non-diagetic before becoming cracked and tinny as Jack walks into the launderette). The colors are all gorgeous and vibrant, looking like nothing so much as one of the aforementioned Anderson’s candy-colored epics.

In the pivotal role of Jack, Pegg is as reliably solid as ever. He manages to bring just the right amount of nice-guy restraint to balance out the bottomless ocean of neuroses that is Jack: too much in either direction and the character would be either insufferable or as bland as milquetoast. As such, however, we get some truly great Pegg moments, including the scene where he gives change to begging children, via used sock, through his mail slot or the aforementioned bit where he argues with his potential killer about whether hair metal or gangster rap was the more valid cultural entertainment. The rest of the cast, particularly Alan Drake as the daffy “community support police officer” Tony, are all excellent but this is truly Pegg’s show: he gets the most screen-time, by a yard, and relishes it.

There are a laundry-list of reasons this film shouldn’t have worked. For one thing, this kind of hyper-kinetic storytelling can easily dissolve into mush when done wrong: just look at Ritchie’s post-Snatch filmography (including Sherlock Holmes, please and thank you) or the brain-dead Shoot ‘Em Up (2007) for proof. Mills is a new, untested director coming from not only a famous family but a famous rock band: there’s no reason this shouldn’t have smelled and tasted like a vanity project. The actual plot (guy is afraid of everything, must get to meeting) is pretty thin and the final twist wraps things up in such a stereotypically happy, upbeat ending that it threatens to make everything before it seem like subtle parody, like a Jack Handey aphorism taken too far.

Against all odds, however, A Fantastic Fear of Everything works. And it works spectacularly well, if I might add. The script is sharp and clever, full of laugh-out-loud scenes, dialogue and ingeniously clever plot details. The animated sequences are all fresh and fit in perfectly with the rest of the film, as well as contributing to the overall themes of the film (how one’s imagination can imprison one, if not careful). The acting is uniformly top-notch and the cinematography and sound design are exemplary. Truth be told, short of a truly embarrassing scene where Pegg mugs along to a rap song (this is almost as nerve-gratingly mortifying as the worst moments of The Office) and some minor issues with structure, there really isn’t much wrong with the film. If you can handle a little silliness and some self-referential moments, A Fantastic Fear of Everything is actually a pretty smart peek into the issues that make us all the stupid little humans that we are. For my money, I’m more than willing to give Jack a place on Simon Pegg’s Character Wall of Fame and I’m more than eager to find out what Crispian Mills comes up with next.