6/27/15 (Part One): The Unreality of Modern Life

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absurdist, Adaptation, Alain Chabat, art films, auteur theory, Élodie Bouchez, breaking the fourth wall, Charlie Kaufman, cinema, confusing films, dark comedies, dream-like, electronic score, Eric Wareheim, experimental film, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, hogs, Hollywood producer, Hollywood satire, husband-wife relationship, insanity, John Gallagher Jr., John Glover, John Heder, Jonathan Lambert, kooky psychiatrist, Kyla Kenedy, life imitating art, Lola Delon, loss of identity, Matt Battaglia, meta-films, Movies, Mr. Oizo, Patrick Bristow, producer-director relationships, Quentin Dupieux, Reality, Rubber, surrealism, Susan Diol, Synecdoche New York, Thomas Bangalter, videotapes, writer-director-cinematographer-editor, Wrong, Wrong Cops

Many filmmakers merely flirt with the weird and “out there,” toeing a carefully demarcated line in the sand between material that genuinely challenges viewers and material that upholds our own, personal status quos. These films may seem impossibly strange, from the outside, but cracking them open, as it were, tends to reveal their decidedly mundane inner workings. Gussying up a traditional narrative with stylistic tics and quirks, complex timelines and pseudo-philosophical meanderings doesn’t make it genuinely challenging any more than slapping a suit on a dog makes it the chairman of the board.

Standing on the fringes of these “politely difficult” films, however, are another batch of filmmakers: the agitators, the genuinely strange and the patently difficult. These are the filmmakers, artists like Charlie Kaufman, Yorgos Lanthimos, György Pálfi, Guy Maddin and Gaspar Noé, who possess singular visions that sit so far outside the mainstream as to seem almost alien. From films like Adaptation (2002) and Synedoche, New York (2008) to movies like Taxidermia (2006), Enter the Void (2009), Dogtooth (2009) and Tales From the Gimli Hospital (1988), these headscratchers are as far from popcorn multiplex features as one can get, immersing audiences into bizarre worlds that look strangely like our own, albeit twisted through a fractured mirror.

And, just to the left of that particular group, stands French auteur Quentin Dupieux. With a body of work that includes some of the most genuinely bizarre, out-there films I’ve ever seen, Dupieux has quickly become one of my very favorite modern filmmakers. As a firm believer in the auteur theory, Dupieux is sort of my gold standard in this day and age: not only does he write and direct his films, he also shoots, edits and performs the electronic scores (Dupieux is also a world-renowned electro-musician who goes by the name Mr. Oizo)…talk about a one-man band! Any new Dupieux film is cause for celebration, which leads us to the subject of our current discussion: his newest oddball creation, Reality (2014). Did I expect the unexpected? But of course. Did Dupieux deliver? Between my aching cranium and over-stimulated imagination, I’m gonna have to answer in the affirmative.

Coming across as a bizarro-world take on Adaptation, threaded through with elements of The Truman Show (1998) and left to melt in the noonday sun, Reality deals with three separate individuals and the ways in which their lives eventually crisscross each other, leading to no small amount of pandemonium, confusion and inner turmoil. Reality (Kyla Kenedy) is an inquisitive young girl whose hunter father (Matt Battaglia, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a young Paul Newman) has just killed a wild boar in the woods and pulled a blue videotape from its carcass. She also seems to be the star of some sort of film being shot in her room, while she sleeps, by a kooky director named Zog (the always-kooky John Glover)…you know, your basic kid stuff.

The next corner of our triangle is inhabited by Dennis (John Heder), the mopey, downtrodden host of a TV cooking show who wears a moth-eaten rat costume and scratches his (possibly imaginary) eczema like it was going out of style. All that Dennis wants is a little relief from his constant irritation but a trip to outrageously obnoxious Dr. Klaus (Patrick Bristow) makes him out to be either a liar, an idiot or both.

The final point of the triangle, preternaturally nice cameraman Jason (Alain Chabat, who featured prominently in several Gondry films, among many others), also ends up being our defacto protagonist. After working his way up from receptionist to cameraman on Dennis’ show, Jason now wants to take the next step and secure funding for his own film, a strange little sci-fi movie about evil, sentient televisions called Waves. When Jason goes to pitch his idea to mega-producer Bob Marshall (Jonathan Lambert), however, the Hollywood exec is only interested in one, single aspect of the proposed production: if Jason can come with the best, most “Oscar-worthy” groan of all time, Marshall will fund his film, sight unseen.

From this point, it becomes a madcap dash as our three corners all attempt to achieve their goals: Reality needs to find out what’s on the videotape, Dennis needs to cure his skin condition and Jason needs to find the ultimate expression of pain and present it to his increasingly unhinged producer. Did I also mention Henri (Eric Wareheim), Reality’s school superintendent, whose cross-dressing dreams appear to be bleeding into reality? How about Jason’s wife, Alice (Élodie Bouchez), the shrink who’s treating Henri in between disparaging virtually every aspect of her husband’s life? Somehow, all of these disparate elements come together to form a real tsunami of the strange, culminating in a truly mind-melting meta-commentary on the nature of authorship, the terror of identity and the inherent insanity of the Hollywood movie machine. In other words: par for the course for Dupieux, the crown-prince of impish cinematic provocateurs.

As an unabashed fan of anything and everything Dupieux (last year’s Wrong Cops was my pick for best film of the year), approaching any new film of his is always a bracing mixture of anticipation and nervous optimism: I haven’t been let down, yet, but I’m the kind of gloomy gus who always expects disappointment around every potential corner. As luck would have it, however, Reality isn’t the film to break Dupieux’s hot-streak, although it definitely doesn’t rank as high as Wrong Cops or Wrong (2012) in my personal metrics. Despite being a much more baffling, confounding experience than any of his prior films, Reality handily displays an outsider filmmaker in full control of his faculties, bound and determined to submerge us in his particular flavor of “reality,” whether or not our poor minds are equipped to handle the experience.

One of the most notable differences, right off the bat, is the more austere, “realistic” vibe of Dupieux’s newest film. In fact, it isn’t until nearly 30 minutes in where it really “feels” like a Dupieux: the scene where Wareheim is introduced, driving a jeep down the street while wearing a gray dress and red scarf, all scored by that subtle “Oizoian” brand of simmering electronica, is quintessential Dupieux and one of his most striking scenes yet. While the film goes on to blend the more serious vibe with some of the goofier elements of his past films (Klaus is the kind of character that can pretty much only exist in a Dupieux universe), there’s a much different vibe here than either Wrong Cops or Wrong. If anything, Reality plays like a more under-stated, low-key take on the existential insanity of Wrong.

As befits Dupieux’s films, he gets some extraordinarily great work out of his cast. While Heder doesn’t get quite as much screentime as I would have liked, he gives the role his all: at times, his performance reminded me of Michael Keaton’s outstanding work in Birdman (2014), albeit without many of Keaton’s subtle shadings. Kenedy does a great job as Reality, disproving the old adage that child actors can’t hold their own amongst the grownups. Glover is predictably odd as Zog, while Lambert has an obscene amount of fun as the batshit crazy producer: whether he’s forcing cigarettes on poor, non-smoking Jason or sniping surfers with a high-powered rifle (complete with scope), Marshall is an absolute force of nature.

For his part, Wareheim turns in my second favorite performance of his ever, the first being his role in Wrong Cops. I never actually liked anything Wareheim was a part of until he got involved with Dupieux’s films: needless to say, I still don’t care for any of his other roles but I’ll be damned if he’s not an integral, necessary part of this particular world. Any and all of Wareheim’s scenes here are easy highlights (the dream sequence where he yells at an old man is, hands-down, one of the funniest sequences of the entire year) and he fits the overall ethos like a glove: as strange as it seems, Wareheim just might be Dupieux’s muse.

While the ensemble cast does remarkable work, however, Alain Chabat’s performance as Jason Tantra is the beating heart of the film. Reality would frequently collapse into chaos if we weren’t so invested in poor Jason’s quest: as he tries to satisfy not only his work and home commitments but his inner, artistic ones, it’s easy to see Jason as a kind of “Everyman” (albeit one focused on the entertainment industry), an avatar for a modern world lost in the clang and bustle of its own progress. The scenes where Jason fights to retain not only his sanity but his very identity are so fundamentally powerful because Chabat cuts through the inherent absurdity and shows us the real, scared and confused individual beneath.

As befits the rest of Dupieux’s oeuvre, Reality looks and sounds amazing: he really has an eye for crisp, colorful cinematography that pops on the screen and that trademark score elevates and enhances everything it comes into contact with. Dupieux may wear an awful lot of hats but he wears them all like a champ, not a chump: he’s a true auteur, in every sense of the term.

While Reality is a typically strong film, I would also be remiss if I didn’t admit that I found the whole thing rather baffling and confounding: this is the kind of film where logic and narrative cohesion mean a great deal less than mood and intention. Although none of Dupieux’s films could ever be called “simplistic,” Reality layers level upon level of meta-commentary until the only natural response for one’s brain is to yell “Stop!” and pull the dead man’s switch. While I’m fairly confident that I understand aspects of the film (the commentary on authorship is pretty difficult to miss and it’s rather easy to see the character of Jason as a surrogate for Dupieux’s own filmmaking experiences), there’s much that remains a complete mystery to me, at least until I’ve managed to watch the film several more times. Suffice to say that Reality is such an experience, I don’t mind doing the heavy-lifting: much better to imperfectly understand a clever film than to be endlessly bored by a dumb one, methinks.

At the end of the day, there’s really not much to say here that I haven’t already said about the rest of Quentin Dupieux’s films: the French filmmaker is a true marvel, one of the freshest, most ingenious voices operating today and just the kind of filmmaker who can help push the industry into a higher plane of existence. If Reality doesn’t rank as my favorite Dupieux (it actually ranks towards the bottom, perhaps tied with Rubber (2010)), it still manages to stand head-and-shoulders above most of what’s out there, proving that the most fascinating things are still coming out of the fringes. Here’s to hoping that if Dupieux ever gets co-opted by the mainstream, he manages to retain more of his identity than Spike Jonze did: I’d love the chance to see him play in a bigger sandbox but only if he got to do it on his terms and his alone.

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

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

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

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The Best Films of 2014 (cont.)

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Borgman

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

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Grand Piano

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

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Rhymes For Young Ghouls

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

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Under the Skin

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

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Housebound

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

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Jodorowsky’s Dune

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

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Nymphomaniac Vols 1 & 2

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

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Calvary

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

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Obvious Child

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

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

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

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1.

Wrong Cops

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.