DAILY FILM DOSE: A Daily Film Appreciation and Review Blog: Black Comedy

Showing posts with label Black Comedy. Show all posts

Friday, 24 August 2012

Bernie

The truer than fiction story of a charismatic assistant funeral director who finds himself in a sensationalized crime that tears apart the allegiances of the gossipy townsfolk of a small town in Texas has become a minor sensation. It’s the little film that could in the independent film world. At the time of gargantuan summer super hero films 'Bernie' coasted under the radar, found its niche and garnered an impressive $9 million+ at the box office.

Bernie (2012) dir. Richard Linklater
Starring: Jack Black, Shirley Maclean, Matthew McConaughey

By Alan Bacchus

Bernie is described as a non-resident, who for some reason moved to the small town of Carthage, TX, a place most people want to leave. As a smooth talker naturally he finds a job as a salesman, but in a funeral home. He's very successful, someone meticulous enough to dress the corpses, talented enough to sing lovely gospel songs at the ceremonies and warm-hearted enough to be able to grieve harmoniously with the older widows, but also smooth enough to upsell them on the funeral amenities.

While he charms all the older ladies in town, Bernie sets out to please the bitchiest woman in town, Marge Nugent (Mclean), a widow with some wealth but stingy and vicious. Bernie is a glutton for punishment but manages to cozy up close enough to be her personal assistant. However, Bernie reaches a breaking point, murders the old hag and spends the next nine months covering up her disappearance. A sensationalized trial sets the record straight, but many in the community, despite the opinion of the law, refuse to believe their beloved Bernie is a murderer.

Jack Black as Bernie carries this film as impressively as anything in his body of work. His performance as the affable and charming title character is wonderfully nuanced. The details about Bernie, Nugent and the story are told by the descriptions from the townsfolk in Carthage, real people shown in traditional documentary talking head interviews. The unconventionality of this approach aids in anchoring this story in reality.

Rich in theme, Bernie also becomes a film about identity and deception, specifically for Bernie, who is both open and welcome but also a subtly closeted homosexual gossiped about by the community but not rejected or shunned. The prevalence of the church complements the town’s skepticism of the proven facts of the case. Like their unwavering devotion to God, Carthage refuses to accept even the most heinous and glaring details of Bernie’s case.

Matthew McConaughey plays the town solicitor who prosecutes Bernie. He fits in well with the small town flavour, dressing himself down with unstylish policeman glasses and a cumbersome six gallon hat. He also has a personality as bold and absurd as Bernie’s. And Shirley Maclean is a welcomed return to cinema, chewing her role as the maniacal superbitch Marge Nugent.

But it’s Jack Black’s understated performance that puts the twinkle in this modest little indie gem.

***

Bernie is available on DVD from Alliance Films in Canada.

Tuesday, 31 July 2012

Clue

Twenty-seven years on from this picture, 'Clue' survives wonderfully as one of the best comedies of the '80s, the black comedic farce based on the Parker Brothers board game featuring six equally great performances as the famed house guests and murder suspects, and a commanding comic performance from Tim Curry as the venerable butler. 'Clue'’s wicked mixture of dead-pan wit and wicked slapstick feels like Mel Brooks lampooning 'Rules of the Game' as an Agatha Christie mystery.

Clue (1985) dir. Jonathan Lynn
Starring: Tim Curry, Michael McKean, Eileen Brennan, Christopher Lloyd, Madeline Kahn, Lesley Ann Warren, Martin Mull

It’s 1954 New England, an Agatha Christie set-up, a rainy night and a group of strangers gathering for a dinner party at a gloomy hill top mansion. Dramatic crashes of lightning and other delicious music stings establish a heightened sense of mystery and intrigue, and the dreamy early rock and roll music cues as a counterpoint to the delirious murder and mayhem to come.

The affable but secretive butler, Wadsworth (Curry), welcomes the guests who are given six fake names, known to us by the charcters in the board game; Prof Plum (Lloyd), Miss Scarlett (Warren), Mrs. White (Kahn), Mrs. Peacock (Brennan), Mr. Green (McKean) and Col. Mustard (Mull). The six deadly weapons are also cleverly integrated into the mix when Mr. Body, the nefarious host who is revealed to be blackmailing all the guests for the various indiscretions, gives each guest a weapon to kill Wadsworth. Of course, it’s Mr. Body who winds up dead and everyone is a suspect.

Jonathan Lynn’s direction is unstylish but effective, choreographing his action using wide shots to put as many characters in his frames as possible. Lynn’s camera moves invisibly throughout the space to capture the reactions of all the characters to the zaniness of the action all at once. And so, it’s the rhythm of dialogue which sets the pace of the scenes. Cast mostly by supporting actors, no one particular character stands out. Each complements the other, bringing their own comic flavours to the table - an ensemble in the best sense.

The actors are just as comfortable timing their witty one-liners as performing pratfalls and other traditional slapstick material. Tim Curry's performance is the most inspired, as he sells gags like the quick insults aimed at the slow-witted Col. Mustard and controls the pace with his remarkable manic physicality.

As written by Lynn (with John Landis), the script could not be any tighter. It only takes an hour or so before Wadsworth proclaims to know who the killer is. The entire third act is a delirious sequence, featuring Curry as Wadsworth retelling and re-acting the entire film we just saw with the aggressive franticness of the Marx Bros.

Equally inspired are the three endings shot for the film and released as three separate movies back in its theatrical release. It was a terrific marketing hook, which to my knowledge hasn't been repeated since. Since it's only been on home video we get to watch all three endings at once, adding one last marvelous post-modern comedic gag to cap off this terrific film.

***½

Clue is available on Blu-ray on August 7 from Paramount Home Entertainment, presumably timed with the release of another board game adaptation, 'Battleship'. The results couldn't be any more extreme.

Wednesday, 11 April 2012

Carnage

Carnage (2011) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly, Jodie Foster, Christophe Waltz

***½

By Alan Bacchus

Recalling the power of the fiery words of the four adults in Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, Carnage, the latest Roman Polanski film, based on the stage play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, has the same kind of effect. In this film Polanski assembles two couples bickering about the restitution deserved when one child assaults the other child in a play yard spat. Carnage’s approach is more suitable and satirical than Wolf, keenly skewering the conservative elite, liberal wonkheads and in general the ineffectiveness of civilized dispute resolution – intellectual nihilism at its best.

Jodie Foster is a wound-up tight liberal writer/librarian harbouring strong feelings of inadequacy about her weak writing career. John C. Reilly, her husband, is a salt of the earth bathroom fixture salesman, partly emasculated by his current domestic status as equal caregiver to his son. Together they have a son, whom we never see, but whom was the victim of a blow from another boy in the school yard, which has left him with some facial lacerations and in need of dental work. Kate Winslet is a lawyer in a doomed marriage with a workaholic investment banker, Christophe Waltz, who spends most of his time on his Blackberry. They are the parents of the other boy committed the assault.

The film opens with the negotiation process of the formal apology letter, nitpicking every word in a passive aggressive way to exert their authority over the other. When it's time to leave, Alan and Nancy (Waltz/Winslet) can’t seem to get out of the door, or get in the elevator without being sucked back into their argument. Michael and Penelope (Reilly/Foster), likewise, just can’t let go of the damage inflicted upon their son. The rest of the day is spent in a complex and evolving dialogue between the four boobs, fueled by scotch. Their unspoken opinions of each other and themselves devolve the get-together into a satirical spat for the ages.

Polanski is certainly at home working in a cramped apartment, deftly moving his camera from character to character and around the room while escalating tension before spilling over into its angered catharsis. The film is scripted by Reza and Polanski, who are very careful not to assign full culpability to any of the characters. Foster is delightfully grating as a ball of neuroses, the turning point represented by her attachment to an art book coffee table decoration that gets puked on by Kate Winslet. Initially, Reilly appears to be the mediator but then reveals his former life as a bully, not unlike his son, who revelled in his school yard status and quiet envy of Waltz's alpha male persona. Waltz’s droll reactions to all the shenanigans makes him the audience’s point of view into the absurdity, always maintaining his composure with a straight face, but still annoyingly crass and self-absorbed. Winslet is perhaps the most normal of the bunch, but once the scotch starts flowing she unleashes her own form of verbal vengeance on Michael, Penelope and her husband, Alan.

The title of the film refers to the God of Carnage, discussed by the characters, which serves as a mythological metaphor for the effectiveness of simple school yard justice versus the inane dance of manners. For fear of indulging in too much intellectual hyperbole, Reza brilliantly has Kate Winslet puke over Penelope’s coffee table, a ridiculous absurdist act that gleefully pays homage to the surrealist king, Luis Bunuel. But Carnage stays on the side of realism. We can't help but see ourselves in each of these characters, who make the discussion thoroughly engaging, hilarious and powerful.

Friday, 23 December 2011

Carnage

Carnage (2011) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz

****

By Greg Klymkiw

I had to see Carnage again to experience everything I missed the first time. It's the funniest movie of the year, so be prepared to laugh so hard that you too will need to see it a second time. Then, you'll probably want to see it a third time - just because it's so terrific.

The movie is also blessed with the distinction of being one of the best stage-to-screen adaptations ever committed to film. Based on Yasmina Reza's award-winning play "God of Carnage", the author could not have asked for a better director than the great Roman Polanski to guide its four characters through a mud-swamped, mustard-gas-infused battlefield of nasty sniping - not in Beirut, mind you, but within the upscale luxury of a lovely New York apartment.

So much of Reza's ferocious knee-slapping dialogue is worthy of that which pulsates through Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf". Though overall the play/movie as a whole is not as dangerously devastating as Albee's classic four-hander, (nothing ever could/would be) Carnage is, as a movie, so much more honest and brilliant than, say, the fake nastiness of such overrated crap as Alan Ball's screenplay for American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes. With American Beauty and his loathsome screen adaptation of Revolutionary Road, the marginally talented Mendes specializes, it seems, in rendering drama that purports to expose all the raw nerve endings of human existence, but does so for those who only pretend they like the lower depths of domestic bile puked up on a platter - but really don't.

Carnage, on the other hand, expunges its smorgasbord of bilious goods with Polanski's trademark aplomb and sheer delicious, vicious glee. (There's even a great moment in the movie that comes close to the shock and hilarity of the now-famous Trelkovsky-in-the-park sequence in The Tenant.) This picture is possibly even more claustrophobic than all of Polanski's previous "apartment" pictures combined - though it's brilliantly bookended with (and scored by the wonderful Alexander Desplat) by two phenomenal exterior sequences. Other than those, though, we're smack dab in the living room, kitchen and hallway of an apartment.

Two relatively affluent 40-something couples meet over coffee and cobbler to discuss, in a civilized manner, the fisticuffs which broke out between their respective pre-teen sons. The conversation zig-zags between several topics, all related in some fashion to the initial offending action. However, once the coffee and cobbler is abandoned in favour of a bottle of scotch, the relative restraint gives way to a no-holds-barred, rock-em-sock-em, to-the-death cage match of verbal assaults and, much to everyone's surprise, an uncorking of everything that's wrong with both marriages.

The hosts of this afternoon meeting of minds are clearly the odd couple of the two. Michael (John C. Reilly) is a borderline boor who runs a successful wholesale firm that specializes in fixtures. His wife Penelope (Jodie Foster) is a pinched prig with a penchant for fine art catalogues and coffee table books and labours in her not-so successful career as an author (her latest book is about the suffering of Darfur). The guests of the host couple seem, on the surface, a perfect fit. Alan (Christoph Waltz) is a sleazy lawyer who represents dubious pharmaceutical companies and Nancy (Kate Winslet) is a chicly-attired trophy wife.

As the afternoon progresses, battle lines are drawn, re-drawn and the balance of power shifts ever so deftly from one side to the other. In no time, the blades come out. The eviscerations are at first levelled from hosts to guests and vice-versa, but when each respective husband and wife begin on each other, the nasty accusations and finger pointing become far more revelatory than any of the characters bargained for that day.

When Michael, the seemingly happy-go-lucky schlub opines, "We're born alone and we die alone," he quickly adds, "Does anyone want a little scotch?" Offering booze to quell a tense situation, is frankly akin to aiming a thermonuclear device at the Hoover Dam.

The cast is uniformly fine. Reilly plays on his goofy, hangdog appeal but brings a heretofore unexplored malevolence to his bag of thespian tricks. Jodie Foster delivers another trademark slender thread performance, but reveals a terrific sense of humour. Kate Winslet beguiles us with her full-figured beauty, but eventually lets rip with her fair share of verbal daggers. Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) proves again why he is one of the best actors working today - he careens from cutthroat to pathetically needy and everything in between.

Some critics who should know better (my familiar refrain), have admired the movie grudgingly, but toss it off as a "filmed play". Nothing could be further from the truth. Polanski is a master of enclosed spaces (Repulsion, The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby, etc.). His deft camera placement and movement is pure cinema. More importantly, he adheres to what ultimately makes the best big-screen adaptations of theatre - he refuses, by and large, to "open-up" the action.

This knee-jerk attempt by filmmakers to render their work more cinematic serves - more often than not - to dilute the power of the text and thus rendering it MORE lacking in the hallmarks of cinematic storytelling. (Let's NOT forget the moronic decision on the part of director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Ernest Lehman to "open up" the otherwise GREAT film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by shifting the locale briefly to a nearby roadside bar. The sequence sticks out like a sore thumb.)

Polanski refuses to take the easy way out. He throws us into the four walls of this apartment and forces us, for eighty minutes, to engage in the superb verbal jousts which, I must assert are plenty nasty and screamingly funny. Carnage is ultimately a class act all the way and once again, Roman Polanski proves he's one of the great living filmmakers.

Oh, and guess what? It's about adults.

"Carnage" is being released by Mongrel Media and will be seen in both mainstream cinemas and at the TIFF Bell Lightbox as the cherry on the sundae of a superb mini-retrospective of Polanski's claustrophobic masterworks.

Friday, 16 December 2011

Cul de Sac

Cul de Sac (1966) dir. Roman Polanski
Starring: Donald Pleasance, Lionel Stander, Françoise Dorléac

**½

By Alan Bacchus

However inspired and influential Roman Polanski’s remarkable body of work in the '60s was, there are a few duds. Cul de Sac, hot off Polanski’s two previous films (Knife in the Water and Repulsion), the story of an American gangster holding a meek faux-bourgeois couple hostage in northern Britain might suggest another psychological drama of domestic terror. Unfortunately, there’s a strong injection of swinging '60s comedy, a unique haphazard kind of rambunctious madcap tone that doesn’t really translate well to today.

Think of the silliness of say Casino Royale or It’s a Mad Mad Mad World, a comedic randomness perhaps born from the psychedelic effects of the hallucinogenic drugs at the time. Ok, Cul de Sac is not Casino Royale by any means, but the uncontrolled zaniness is cut from the same cloth, a product of its time.

Like most of his famous pictures, Polanski keeps his production contained. Although in this case the environment of Cul de Sac is more in line with the open containment of his characters in Knife in the Water than walled in claustrophobic Catherine Deneuve’s apartment in Repulsion.

Lionel Stander plays Dickie, a grossly exaggerated American gangster injured from some kind of robbery, on the lam in a car with his partner, who is also injured. When the car breaks down he holes up in a castle, which happens to be inhabited by a young couple; George, a neurotic boob (Pleasance) and his sexually alluring French wife, Teresa (Dorleac). It's not your typical home invasion, as the three engage in numerous oddball activities and discussions. There's really only a hint of a threat from Dickie - partly due to Lionel Stander's gruff but high-pitched and affable voice.

There are a number of levels of theme and humour running through Polanski's surreal and often lunatic indulgences. The placement of these characters in the obscenely antiquated 11th century castle amid a near desolate part of Northern England perhaps forces the audience to reconcile the socio-political differences between three nations - France, America and England. The French (as played by Dorleac), flighty and flirty, America (Stander, pushy opportunists and movie heavies who like to get their own way, and the English (Pleasance), drunken dithering buffoons.

Polanski's superb visual eye is impressive, as always. The castle seems to be perpetually engulfed by ominous and beautifully photographed cumulus clouds in the sky and by an expansive beach tide on the ground, which has the power to isolate the castle entirely in water for large stretches of time.

The fun of Cul de Sac is finding connections across Polanski's body of work, like his penchant for wide-angle interior handheld camerawork placed mere inches away from his actors, as in Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby. The castle setting and the visual motifs of the changing tides remind us of his spectacular and often underappreciated work in his grisly version of Macbeth (1971).

Unfortunately, other than these connections there's not much to take home from Cul de Sac except for maybe Donald Pleasance's oddball performance, another kooky role from the always curious and off-kilter actor.

Cul de Sac is one of a number of Polanski films, including Chinatown, Knife in the Water and Rosemary's Baby, screened this month at TIFF Bell Lightbox, timed with the premiere of his latest, Carnage, next week.

Monday, 21 November 2011

Father's Day - Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2011

Father's Day (2011) dir. Astron-6
(Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney)
Starring: Conor Sweeney, Adam Brooks, Matt Kennedy, Brent Neale, Amy Groening, Meredith Sweeney, Kevin Anderson, Garret Hnatiuk, Mackenzie Murdoch, Lloyd Kaufman

****

By Greg Klymkiw

"Death ends a life. But it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind. toward some resolution which it may never find." - Robert Anderson from his play, I Never Sang For My Father

A father's love for his son is a special kind of love. As such, Dads the world over face that singular inevitability - that peculiar epoch in their collective lives, when they must chauffeur the apple of their eye from a police station, for the third time in a month, after said progeny has undergone questioning upon being found in a motel room with a dead man covered in blood, après le bonheur de la sodomie, only to return home after dropping said twink son on a street corner, so the aforementioned offspring of the light-in-the-loafer persuasion, can perform fellatio on old men for cash, whilst Dad sits forlornly in the domicile that once represented decent family values and stare at a framed photo of better times, until he succumbs to unexpected anal rape and as he weeps, face down and buttocks up, he is doused with gasoline and set on fire, then frenziedly tears into the street screaming, until collapsing in a charred heap in front of his returning son, who reacts with open-mouthed horror as the scent of old penis, wafts, ever so gently, from his delicate twink tonsils.

For most fathers, all of the above is, no doubt, a case of been-there-done-that - not unlike that inevitable fatherly attempt at understanding when Dad gently seeks some common ground with the fruits of his husbandly labours and offers: "Look son, I experimented when I was young, too."

So begins Father's Day - with the aforementioned, AND some delectable pre-credit butchery, an eye-popping opening credit sequence with images worthy of Jim Steranko and a series of flashbacks during an interrogation with a hard-boiled cop. This is the astounding feature film (the second completed feature this year) from the brilliant Winnipeg filmmaking collective Astron-6 (Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney) who have joined forces with the legendary Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz of Troma Entertainment to generate a film that is the ultimate evil bastard child sprung from the loins of a daisy chain twixt Guy Maddin, John Paizs, early David Cronenberg, Herschel Gordon Lewis and Abel Ferrara's The Driller Killer.

Father's Day is a triumph! It happily combines the effects of asbestos-tinged drinking water in Winnipeg with the Bukkake splatter of the coolest artistic influences imaginable and yields one of the Ten Best Films of 2011.

It is the seed of depraved genius that's spawned Astron-6 and, of course, with the best work in Canadian film, it has been embraced by an entity outside of Canada - the glorious aforementioned sleaze-bucket uber-mensch nutters who gave the world The Toxic Avenger. This collective of five (not six) brilliant filmmakers (including the above named quartet and Steven Kosanski, the F/X wizard, writer and director of Astron-6's MANBORG) are part of a new breed of young Canadian filmmakers who have snubbed their noses at the government-funded bureaucracies that oft-eschew the sort of transgression that normally puts smaller indigenous cultural industries on the worldwide map (including its own - Canada only truly supports such work grudgingly once it's found acceptance elsewhere). In this sense, Astron-6 has been making films under the usual radar of mediocrity and steadfastly adhering to the fine Groucho Marx adage: "I refuse to join any club that would have someone like me for a member."

Imagine, if you will, any government-funded agency (especially a Canadian one), doling out taxpayer dollars to the following plot: Chris Fuchman (Mackenzie Murdoch), is a serial killer that specializes in targeting fathers for anal rape followed by further degradations, including torture, butchery and/or murder. Our madman, Fuchman (substitute :k" for "h" to pronounce name properly), turns out to be a demon from the deepest pits of hell and a ragtag team is recruited by a blind infirm Archbishop of the Catholic Church (Kevin Anderson) to fight this disgusting agent of Satan. An eyepatch-wearing tough guy (Adam Brooks), a young priest (Matthew Kennedy), the aforementioned twink male prostitute (Conor Sweeney) and hard-boiled dick (Brent Neale) and a jaw-droppingly gorgeous stripper (Amy Groening) follow the trail of this formidable foe whilst confronting all their own personal demons.

This frothy brew of vile delights includes some of the most graphic blood splattering, vicious ass-slamming violence, gratuitous nudity, skimpy attire for the ladies, 'natch (and our delectable twink), morality, evisceration, hunky lads, delicious babes, compassion, rape, fellatio, chainsaw action, wholesome content, cannibalism, hand-to-hand combat, gunplay, family values, sodomy, immolation and monsters. It's all delivered up with a cutting edge mise-en-scène that out-grindhouses Tarantino's Grindhouse and delivers thrills, scares and laughs all in equal measure.

The film's sense of humour, in spite, or perhaps because of the proper doses of scatology and juvenilia is not the typical low-brow gross-out humour one finds in so many contemporary comedies, but frankly, works on the level of satire, and as such, is of the highest order. It stylistically straddles the delicate borders great satire demands. Too many people who should know better, confuse spoof or parody with satire and certainly anyone going to see Father's Day expecting SCTV, Airplane or Blazing Saddles might be in for a rude awakening. Yes, it's just as funny as any of those classic mirth-makers, but the laughs cut deep and they're wrought, not from the typical shtick attached to spoofs, but like all great satire, derive from the entire creative team playing EVERYTHING straight. No matter how funny, absurd or outlandish the situations and dialogue are, one never senses that an annoying tongue is being drilled firmly in cheek. Astron-6 loves their material and, importantly loves their creative influences. Their target is not necessarily the STYLE of film they're rendering homage to, but rather, the hypocrisies and horrors that face humanity everyday - religion, repression, dysfunction - all wedged cleverly into the proceedings.

Clearly a great deal of the movie's power in terms of its straight-laced approach to outlandish goings-on is found in the performances - all of them are spot-on. Adam Brooks IS a stalwart hero and never does he veer from infusing his role from the virtues inherent in such roles. Hell, he could frankly be Canada's Jason Statham in conventional action movies if anyone bothered to make such movies in Canada on any regular basis. Conor Sweeney as Twink is a marvel. Not only does he play the conflicted gay street hustler "straight", he straddles that terrific balance between genuinely rendering a layered character, but also infusing his performance with melodramatic aplomb. Not only is this ideal for the character itself, but it's perfectly in keeping with the style of movie that is being lovingly celebrated. Anyone who reads my stuff regularly will know my mantra: Melodrama is not a dirty word - as an approach to drama, it's a legitimate genre. There is good melodrama and bad melodrama, like any other genre. End of story. No arguments. Luckily, the Astron-6 team has the joy of glorious melodrama hard-wired into their collective DNA and Sweeney's performance is especially indelible in this respect. Brent Neale as the hard-boiled cop is, quite simply, phenomenal. Will someone out there give this actor job after job after job? The camera loves him and he knows how to play to the camera. He is clearly at home with the straight-up and melodramatic aspects of his role and most importantly, he is imbued with the sort of smoulder that makes stars - he's handsome and intense.

Astoundingly, not a single actor in this film feels out of place. Whether they're emoting straight, slightly stilted, wildly melodramatic or, on occasion (given the genre), magnificently reeking of ham, this is ensemble acting at its absolute best.

The entire movie was made on a budget of $10,000 and once again, for all the initiatives out there to generate low-budget feature films, Father's Day did it cheaper (WAY CHEAPER) and better. The movie uses its budgetary constraints not as limitations, but as a method to exploit what can be so special about movies. The visual and makeup effects as well as the art direction ooze imagination and aesthetic brilliance and it's all captured through a lens that puts its peer level and even some big budget extravaganzas to shame. Imagination is truly the key to success with no-budget movies. The Father's Day cinematography is often garish and lurid, but delightfully and deliciously so - with first-rate lighting and excellent composition. The filmmakers and their entire team successfully render pure gold out of elements that in most low-budget films just looks cheap - or worse, blandly competent (like most low budget Canadian movies). It's total trash chic - trash art, if you must.

I attended this spectacular event in France many years ago called the FreakZone International Festival of Trash Cinema which celebrated some of the most amazing transgressive works I'd ever seen. When I expressed to the festival director that I was surprised at the level of cinematic artistry, he just smiled and said, "You North Americans have such a limited view of trash culture - for us, trash is not garbage, we use the word to describe work that is subversive." This was so refreshing. It felt like a veil had been lifted from over me and I realized what EXACTLY it was that I loved about no-budget cinema - as a filmmaker, a teacher, a critic and fan.

Making a movie for no money that is NOT subversive on every level is, frankly, just plain stupid. What's the point? And Father's Day is nothing if it's not subversive. Besides, I've seen too many young filmmakers with talent galore ruined by initiatives that purported to celebrate the virtues of no-or-low-budget filmmaking but then forced the artists to apply the idiotic expectations of "industry standards" - whatever that means, anyway. This has been especially acute in Canada, but to be fair, in other non-North American countries also, where bureaucrats make decisions and/or define the rules/parameters of filmmaking.

Father's Day and the entire canon of the Astron-6 team should be the ultimate template for filmmakers with no money to seize the day and make cool shit. That's what it should always be about. And in this case, it took the fortitude of the filmmakers, their genuinely transgressive gifts as artists AND an independent AMERICAN producer to ensure that they made the coolest shit of all.

What finally renders Father's Day special is just how transgressively intelligent it all is and yet, never turns its proverbial nose up at the straight-to-video-nasties of the 80s, the grindhouse cinema of the 60s and 70s and the weird, late night cable offerings of the early 90s. It works very much on the level of the things it loves best. This is real filmmaking - it entertains, it dazzles, it makes use of every cheap trick in the book to create MOVIE magic and finally, it's made by people who clearly care about film. They get to have their cake and eat it too by having as much fun making the movies as we have watching them.

Father's Day was unveiled at Toronto's premiere genre film event, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2011 where it won several awards: the grand prize of Best Film, Most Original Film, Best Hero, Best Kills, Best Trailer and Best Poster - all voted on by the thousands of attendees of the festival. It will be released theatrically in early 2012 by Troma Entertainment and will be followed with the usual forays into home entertainment formats.

Friday, 28 October 2011

The Woman - Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2011

The Woman (2011) dir. Lucky McKee
Starring: Pollyanna McIntosh, Sean Bridgers, Angela Bettis, Lauren Ashley Carter, Zach Rand, Shyla Molhusen

****

By Greg Klymkiw

The Cleek family are living the American Dream! Chris (Sean Bridgers) is a successful back country real estate lawyer with loads of cash, oodles of prime land, a beautiful, devoted wife Belle (Angela Bettis) who puts June Cleaver to shame, three lovely kids including his chip-off-the-old-block son Brian (Zach Rand), a cute-as-a-button little girl with a name to match, Darlin' (Shyla Molhusen) and Peggy (Lauren Ashley Carter), an intelligent, attractive teenage Emo girl privately suffering morning sickness due to possibly being impregnated by her Dad. In the barn are some crazed German Shepherds and a blind, naked feral woman raised with the dogs and tended to by Brian who physically abuses them.

Like all corn-and-steak-fed American men, Chris wakes early in the morning, eats breakfast lovingly prepared by Belle and then, packing a scope rifle and adorned in hunting garb, he smiles and declares how much he loves the quiet of the country before revving up his ATV and tear-assing into the woods for some hunting. To complete this portrait of All-American bliss, one of his hunting trips yields a live trophy - a buxom, beautiful, feral woman from the backwoods that he manacles in the fallout shelter where she is forced to eat food from the floor and/or a Tupperware container and gets scrubbed raw by wifey after being good and hosed down by Dad. When she's first introduced to the family, one of the kids asks if they can really keep her. The answer from Dad is a resounding: YES! After all, she needs to be civilized - a charitable act on Dad's part; even more charitable considering she's already bitten off his ring finger when all he wanted to do was inspect her teeth.

Trussed up and manacled in the dank fallout shelter, the civilization process includes being raped late into the night by Chris while son Brian watches jealously through a peephole. The lovely daughters sleep soundly in their warm, comfortable beds and wifey Belle weeps in the properly accoutered conjugal boudoir at the thought of hubby getting his manly satisfaction elsewhere and, of course, as any eager All American Boy would do, the feral woman, is eventually tortured with wire cutters and sexually abused by the randy little chip-off-the-old-block.

America.

Love it or leave it.

As rendered by director Lucky McKee and his co-screenwriter Jack Ketchum, The Woman is, without a doubt, one of the most foul, wanton and viciously humorous movies of the new millennium. It also seems to be a part of a new wave of films (including those of the brilliant Bobcat Goldthwait) which take family dysfunction several steps further - where dysfunctional depravity has become the norm.

McKee has his actors play everything in a straight deadpan. There isn't a single, out-of-place performance in the entire movie. McKee's mise-en-scene is distinctively sun-dappled-with-dollops-of-blood-and-nastiness and the movie works as both vicious satire and thriller. To say the movie is brutal, would be an understatement of the highest order, but the horrors on display never feel cheap and exploitative the way most torture porn horror films are. This is a savage, raw-nerve-ending-exposed portrait of life in the mean, new America.

As such, it's an unflinching, unyielding ride on the locomotive of excess that has turned one of the world's strongest nations into a veritable third-world country. The movie requires a strong stomach and open mind - anything less and you'll feel like you stepped into your worst nightmare.

So grit your teeth, gird your loins and, enjoy!

The Woman was a closing night film at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2011. It's currently in very limited theatrical release and will soon be available on DVD.

Saturday, 22 October 2011

Les Cousins

Les Cousins (1959) dir. Claude Chabrol
Starring: Gérard Blain, Jean-Claude Brialy and Juliette Mayniel

***

By Alan Bacchus

It’s appropriate that this film gets its Blu-ray debut via The Criterion Collection at the same time as Chabrol's previous film, La Beau Serge. Both films represent an inverse of each other, a cinematic yin and yang of sorts.

While Serge features Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy as brothers - Brialy from the city returning to meet Blain from the country - in Les Cousins, it’s Blain still playing the country boy coming to Paris to stay with his bohemian cousin played by Brialy. Tonally, La Beau Serge played like a rebellious and angst-ridden James Dean film. Les Cousins is a playful though quietly disturbing satire on family rivalry.

Here Blain plays Charles, a quiet and humble boy from the country arriving in the big adventurous city of Paris to study law with his cousin. His cousin, Paul (Brialy), is the opposite - a brash, cocky bohemian who struts around his garishly hip apartment leading a pack of other hipster minions and hangers-on. While there’s some warmth and congeniality between the two, at every turn Brialy engages in a series of mental games, passive aggressive behaviour and backhanded compliments to exert his authority.

At stake here are their education and their women. In their studies, Charles as the responsible one is careful not to lose sight of his goal, while Paul shrugs off the shackles of academics in favour of a carefree way of living. When Paul notices Charles’ attraction to one of Paul’s frequent guests, Florence (Mayniel), he aggressively goes after her in order to subjugate his cousin.

For most of the film’s nearly two-hour running time Chabrol plays these mental games without much conflict or threat. From the outset, it’s clear that Charles’ responsibility and studiousness will eventually get the better of Paul. As such, it’s a playful tone, as loose and easy-going as Paul’s lifestyle. Some exhaustion and repetitiveness sets in late in the picture, as we are unsure where this is all going. But Chabrol pulls a wicked trump card out of his back pocket by engineering an intense third act and denouement, which pays off the unfocused pacing.

With this picture I suspect Martin Scorsese may have found some influence in Taxi Driver and a number of his other pictures. Chabrol’s meandering camera moves with the same kind of precision as Scorsese’s, and at times it moves on its own motivated by the character's emotions as opposed to physical movements. Chabrol’s key set piece, Paul's attempted subversion of Charles on the night before his exam, set to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyres has the same kind of slow brewing intensity as some of Scorsese’s celebrated sequences.

Florence’s seduction of Charles during his desperate attempt to cram for his exam the next day is a nail-biting scene and echoes Robert De Niro's seduction of Juliette Lewis in Cape Fear. By now, knowing that Paul has passed his exam, Charles is set up to be completely humiliated for Paul’s sadistic enjoyment. And in the denouement Chabrol again turns the table for the dark, pessimistic finale, turning the film completely upside down from where it started two hours prior.

Les Cousins is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

Friday, 30 September 2011

The Guard

The Guard (2011) dir. John Michael McDonagh
Starring Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle, and Mark Strong

By Blair Stewart

***1/2

John Michael McDonagh's "The Guard" approaches the hoary old fish-out-of-water/mismatched buddy-cop genre and leaps nimbly over those critical beartraps as if it were a ballerina in the pub avoiding a snoring drunk. Brendan Gleeson, the Irish character actor of great repute and anamorphic girth, is the local Guarda (Gaelic for 'Cop') none too perturbed about his work as long as it's not interrupting his casual whoring and chemical intake. As amusing as it would be to spend a few hours or so with the big ginger lug shirking duty a great calamity befalls our Sergeant Gerry Boyle: he has to get off his ass when big city criminals-tailed by sedulous FBI bigshot Wendell (Don Cheadle)-show up in County Galway.

On cue a corpse pops up in the area after the rumour of a boat carrying half-a-billion in street value coke ("What street are you buying your cocaine on?" -Gerry) is on the way, and our anti-hero pairs with Wendell to take the piss out of the Yank while they slap down the bad guys. Said bad guys on the opposite end of the thin blue line (that Gerry crosses all the time with gusto) is a trio of enjoyably literate thugs played at descending levels of cynicism by Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham and David Wilmot. Eventually they'll all run into each other and wackiness will ensue.

Typically when faced with a plotline that could reasonably be described as an 'easygoing Lethal Weapon meets Local Hero with a dash of Western Ireland malarky' I would attempt to pull a fire alarm or commit an act of self-harm, and yet McDonagh's film works for me. In the tailored role Gleeson is superbly entertaining as Gerry, his dopey grin taking the edge off of the small-town racism/tactlessness booming from his mouth. I can only count on two hands a cinematic character as enjoyable to watch as Gleeson's Gerry, somewhere between Tom Regan and Sanjuro on the right one. How much better Hollywood would be if Officer Gerry could pop into some earnest Oscar chaff to dress down the Sean Penns and Will Smiths in a cameo, I'd happily pay top dollar to see that. Don Cheadle's Southern accent slips a few times but one of his strengths has been his ability to sell a reaction shot, and The Guard (which he helped produce, good on him) has a slew of those while Gleeson does his shtick.

As unfortunately most mainstream (or even indie whether local or abroad) films demonstrates it is unwise to slavishly follow the formula of a genre completely. Where a tired formula can be improved upon is in individuality, as McDonagh trots out memorable oddballs from his neck of the woods-or his parents really, John and his brother Martin of "Six Shooter"/"In Bruges" fame grew up in London-to liven up the surroundings, and in treating his audience with respect by making his oddballs witty, and thankfully, intelligent. "The Guard" earns it's climax when I actually cared about what happens to Gerry and Wendell, something very few films succeed at.

If the disposable likes of "Cowboys and Aliens" depresses the hell out of you and you enjoy a filthy joke as much as the next guy, give this film a chance. After all, Ireland's economy needs the money.*

*Sorry, couldn't resist.

Thursday, 15 September 2011

TIFF 2011 - God Bless America

God Bless America (2011) dir. Bobcat Goldthwait
Starring: Joel Murray, Tara Lynne Barr

***½

By Greg Klymkiw

Frank is a very kind person.

He kills people.

But they deserve it.

Big time.

Played brilliantly with pathos and deadpan humour by Joel Murray, Frank is a hard working American for whom life keeps dealing one losing card after another. He's been diagnosed with a fatal disease. His wife has left him for a hunky young cop in a suburban paradise. His daughter has turned into a shrill spoiled brat who doesn't want to visit him on custody days because he has no cool stuff at home like video games. He "forces" her to do "boring" stuff like art, going to the zoo and playing in the park. In fact, his progeny is so indifferent towards him that when Mom calls Frank to see if he can stop one of the brat's petulant gimme-gimme-gimme outbursts, the little bugger’s response is, "I don't want Daddy! I want an iPhone!!!"

Frank is plagued and beleaguered by the Decline of Western Civilization In his world, the decay currently sending America straight into the crapper is one of the things forcing him to lie around his squalid home after mind-numbing work days as an insurance company executive.

Home.

Alone.

Home is a man's castle, but not this man, not this home. His next-door neighbours are genetically moronic White Trash filth - living poster children for strangulation at birth. He is forced, night after night, to crank up the volume on his television to try drowning out their subhuman conversation, the endless cacophony of verbal and physical abuse, the wham-bam sexual activities, the constant caterwauling from their no-doubt genetically stupid infant and the grotesque sounds emanating from their stereo and/or TV.

What he has to endure on television is, frankly, just as bad – the sort of stuff feeding the feeble minds of America – most notably his mind-bereft neighbours. There’s Tuff Girlz, a reality-TV program. Just as Frank channel hops to it, a white trash woman digs a blood-soaked tampon out of her vagina and flings it towards an equally foul white trash douche. Then there’s the endless parade of right wing wags dumping on the disenfranchised of America or insisting: “God hates fags” or presenting images of Barack Obama as Adolph Hitler – replete with Swastikas. News reports of homeless people being burned alive or true crime info-docs on the likes of mass murderer Charles Whitman buttress programs like Dumb Nutz where grown men engage in horrendously painful physical practical jokes on themselves. The airwaves are choked on the self-explanatory Bowling on Steroids or American Superstarz where a celebrity panel insults an untalented retarded boy with no talent whatsoever.

Perhaps the most repellent of all is reality TV star Chloe, a nasty teenage girl who treats anyone and everyone like dirt. She must die.

Poor Frank. Even when he drives to work, every station on his car radio is an aural assault from Tea Party types. Once he gets to the office he has to endure the boneheaded water cooler talk of his simpleton colleagues as they moronically regurgitate everything he was forced to endure on television the night before. Capping off Frank’s miserable existence is a tiny bright spot that quickly turns dark. The fat, ugly sow that handles reception at the front of the office and openly flirts with him files a sexual harassment complaint behind his back and he loses his job.

When he gets home, all he has to look forward to is turning on his TV full blast, yet again, to drown out his jelly-brained neighbours. There is, however, a solution.

Frank, you see, is a Liberal – a Liberal with a handgun.

Cleaning up begins at home, so he pays his neighbours and their grotesquely squealing infant a visit. With his gun in hand, Frank upholds the values of Liberals everywhere – he does what it takes to do what all Liberals must do when civilization is on the brink of collapse.

Okay, we’re only about 15 minutes into God Bless America and at this point I laughed so hard I suspected I might have ruptured something.

From here, the movie doesn’t let up for a second – especially once Frank begins a spree of violence against intolerance with a gorgeous, sexy teenage girl (winningly played by Tara Lynne Barr) who takes a liking to both him and his ways. They’re birds of a feather – a veritable Bonnie and Clyde – fighting for the rights of Liberals and anyone else who might be sick and tired of the mess America is in.

God Bless America is one of the best black comedies I’ve seen in ages. Bobcat Goldthwait makes movies with a sledge hammer, but it's a mighty trusty sledge hammer. He has developed a distinctive voice that began with the magnificently vile Shakes the Clown and with this new film he hits his stride with crazed assuredness. Some might take issue with the way he lets his central characters rant nastily and hilariously - well beyond the acceptability of dramatic necessity - but I have to admit it is what makes his work as a filmmaker so unique. He creates a world that exists within his own frame of reference which, at the same time, reflects aspects and perspectives that hang from contemporary society like exposed, jangled nerves.

With God Bless America, Goldthwait delivers a movie for the ages – one that exposes the worst of America and delivers a satisfying Final Solution to the problem of stupidity and ignorance. The pace, insanity and barrage of delightfully tasteless jokes spew from him with a vengeance, but they're not only funny, he uses them to create movies that challenge the worst elements of the Status Quo.

It's a movie that fights fire with fire.

Or rather, with a handgun.

It’s the American Way!

Even for Liberals.

God Bless America was unveiled at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2011) and if we’re lucky, it’ll be released theatrically very soon.

Tuesday, 13 September 2011

TIFF 2011 - Killer Joe

Killer Joe (2011) dir. William Friedkin
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Gina Gershon, Thomas Haden Church and Juno Temple

***½

By Greg Klymkiw

"I don't think I'll have to kill her. Just slap that pretty face into hamburger meat."
- Jim Thompson dialogue from Stanley Kubrick's The Killing

At one point during William Friedkin's Killer Joe, an unexpected roundhouse to the face renders its recipient’s visage to a pulpy, swollen, glistening, blood-caked skillet of corned beef hash. Said recipient is then forced at gunpoint to fellate a grease-drenched KFC drumstick and moan in ecstasy while family-members have little choice but to witness this horrendous act of violence and humiliation.

William Friedkin, it seems, has his mojo back.

He’s found it in the muse of Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts. The two collaborated in 2007 on the nerve-wracking film adaptation of Bug, a paranoia-laden thriller with Michael Shannon and Ashley Judd. Set mostly within the dank, smoky confines of a sleazy motel room, both dialogue and character was scrumptiously gothic. The narrative was full of unexpected beats, driving the action forward with so much mystery that we could never see what was coming. Alas, Letts lost command of his narrative in the final third, veering into predictability. In spite of this, Bug was still one of the most compelling and original works of its year.

Killer Joe is a total whack job of a movie, and delightfully so.

Set against the backdrop of Texas white trash, the picture opens with a torrential downpour that turns the mud-lot of a trailer park into the country-cousin of war-torn Beirut. Amidst tire tracks turning into small lakes, apocalyptic squalor and lightning flashes revealing a nasty barking mastiff, a scruffy Chris (Emile Hirsch), drenched from head to toe, bangs on the door of a trailer. When it creaks open, a muff-dive-view of the pubic thatch belonging to his ne'er do well Dad's girlfriend Sharla (Gina Gershon) leads Chris to the bleary-eyed Ansel (Thomas Haden Church).

Chris desperately needs to clear up a gambling debt and suggests they order a hit to knock off his Mom, Ansel’s ex-wife. She has a whopping life insurance policy and its sole recipient is Dottie (Juno Temple), the nubile, mentally unstable sister and daughter of Chris and Ansel respectively. Once they collect, Chris proposes they split the dough.

To secure the services of the charming Killer Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) they need to pay his fee upfront. Father and son propose Joe take a commission on the insurance money once it pays out. This is initially not an acceptable proposal until Joe catches sight of the comely Dottie. He agrees to take the job in exchange for a “retainer” – sexual ownership of Dottie.

Father and brother of said sexy teen agree to these terms, though Chris betrays some apprehension as he appears to bear an incestuous interest in his dear sister.

From here, we’re handed plenty of lascivious sexuality, double-crosses, triple-crosses and eventually, violence so horrendous, so sickening that even those with strong stomachs might need to reach for the Pepto Bismol.

Basically, we’re in Jim Thompson territory here. It’s nasty, sleazy and insanely, darkly hilarious.

This celluloid bucket of glorious untreated sewage is directed with Friedkin’s indelible command of the medium and shot with a terrible beauty by ace cinematographer Caleb Deschanel.

Friedkin, the legendary director of The French Connection, The Exorcist and Cruising, dives face first into the slop with the exuberance of a starving hog at the trough and his cast delivers the goods with all the relish needed to guarantee a heapin’ helpin’ of Southern inbred Gothic.

This, my friends, is the kind of movie they don’t make anymore.

Trust William Friedkin to bring us back so profoundly and entertainingly to those halcyon days.

Oh, and if you’ve ever desired to see a drumstick adorned with Colonel Sanders’ batter, fellated with Linda Lovelace gusto, allow me to reiterate that you’ll see it here.

It is, I believe, a first.

Killer Joe is being unveiled for North American audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2011).

Friday, 15 July 2011

Swimming with Sharks

Swimming with Sharks (1994) dir. George Huang
Starring: Frank Whaley, Kevin Spacey, Michelle Forbes, Benecio Del Toro

***1/2

By Alan Bacchus

While The Devil Wears Prada has much in common with Swimming with Sharks, an office film featuring a high-strung executive beating down a lowly assistant for the sake of comedy, George Huang's film, even this many years later, has infinitely more truth and heart than the other more successful film.

I was struck by how honest the relationship between Huang’s two combatants is. Kevin Spacey is Buddy Ackerman (apparently a disguised Scott Rudin) and Frank Whaley is his green office assistant, Guy. No matter how absurd or dark the film becomes, Huang always stays within the boundaries of realism. I’ve been in Guy’s position before, working for a few of these types of personalities. They do exist, and in show business this type of behaviour is accepted and encouraged. Buddy Ackerman is a top executive for a Hollywood production company, someone with little time to accept anything but complete subservience from his staff. Guy is the new guy, a sharp young man with dreams of making it big.

Guy’s first lesson comes from the outgoing assistant played by Benicio Del Toro. It’s a fun sequence, as he describes the ins and outs and unofficial rules of the Hollywood game. The banter is funny but also to-the-letter realistic. It doesn’t take long for the battles to begin. Immediately Guy gets reamed for using the wrong sugar in his coffee. Over the course of the year we watch as Guy gains confidence and the relationship shifts from slave to colleague to a competitor for Buddy.

When Guy ingratiates himself to a female producer and client of Buddy's he sees the light at the end of the tunnel. She’s a confidante with whom he can share his frustrations, not to mention a genuinely emotional romantic relationship.

Huang moves the film toward a dark and twisting plot of revenge – a flash-forward sequence is intercut showing Guy's kidnapping and torturing of Buddy for heinous ill treatment.

Swimming with Sharks arrived at a time when independent film began a resurgence. It was the Tarantino era, and we feel it in every foot of this film. Films like The Player and Living in Oblivion opened us up to the inner workings of Hollywood executives. Even the story of Tarantino’s discovery was well known. He was a film junkie and former video store clerk who schmoozed Hollywood into letting him in the door. Guy's journey is much the same as a wet-behind-the-ears nave exposed to the unscrupulous world of Hollywood.

Spacey is fun as Ackerman, spouting some finely crafted insults, but we never fully understand whether this is exaggeration or a caricature. I'm hesitant to even label this as a comedy. The finale ventures into a disturbing area of dark cynicism, like The Bad and the Beautiful or Sunset Boulevard, dispelling all the romanticism of the movie business. I’ve been in Guy's shoes and it’s scary.

Friday, 17 June 2011

Lolita

Lolita (1962) dir. Stanley Kubrick
Starring: James Mason, Sue Lyon, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers

***

By Alan Bacchus

Lolita sits as a turning point in Stanley Kubrick’s career. It came after Spartacus, a director-for-hire gig, and thus a film in which he didn’t have his usual meticulous creative control or the stamp of authorship. That said, Spartacus is still a fantastic action epic, one of the best Hollywood has ever produced and a huge success. With Lolita, we see Kubrick working with James B. Harris (Paths of Glory, The Killing) again and outside of Hollywood in England, with the dark comedic and salacious subject matter we would see in his later films.

For most of Lolita Kubrick directs the film with the same invisible style as Spartacus, invisible to the immediately recognizable Kubrick hallmarks. There are few wide-angle tracking shots, no brooding classical music cues and no Kubrick ‘look.’ As such, Kubrick remains, as best he could, faithful to Nabakov’s incendiary material.

And incendiary it is. The relationship of a 14-year-old girl and a grossly perverted middle-aged man is played for serious. Humbert Humbert is never really taken to task for his sick and twisted fascination with Lolita, in what really amounts to statutory rape. That said, Humbert is no innocent man. The trajectory of the narrative leads to his psychological demise, a victim of his own obsessions.

Lolita is not a complete masterpiece, as we usually expect from the great director. It suffers from a fault inherent in the story’s architecture. Lolita has the distinction of featuring the most complex and interesting female character Kubrick has ever directed. Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters) is arguably the star of the film, and (spoiler alert) when she dies halfway into the picture the film becomes considerably less funny and less interesting.

Going back to the beginning though. James Mason plays a British professor from New Hampshire who is spending the summer at Beardsley College. While looking for a sublet from a recent widow, Charlotte Haze, he catches a glimpse of her gorgeous and teasing jail-bait daughter Lolita sunbathing in the backyard. What reservations he had about Charlotte are tempered by the intoxicating allure of her young daughter.

And so begins Humbert’s sly and devilish courtship of the young girl. With the male hormones in full control, the dirty old man marries Charlotte in order to get to Lolita. After Charlotte’s suicide, the last hurdle toward full sexual bliss with Lolita is complete. Little does he know another equally devilish pervert, Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers), a local bohemian playwright, has his eyes on Lolita as well. The battle of the sexes was never more competitive and dangerous.

Shelley Winters is mesmerizing as the elder nymphet who lusts after Humbert. Her courtship of him, which runs counter to Humbert’s tactics toward Lolita, helps anchor the delicious sexual provocativeness that has made this film as controversial as it is. The key to the complexity of this three-way relationship is the Britishness of Humbert, as the old world gentlemanliness he exudes disarms Charlotte, Lolita and the audience to his sick and twisted motives. And of course it was 1962, and with hardcore censorship in place, like all great directors, Kubrick puts all of these complex sexual layers beneath the surface and between the lines.

The opening half of the film is filled with uproarious banter between Charlotte and Humbert. But as mentioned, when Charlotte leaves the film much of this comic energy leaves with her. Even the great Peter Sellers is unmemorable. As Clare Quilty, his performance is mostly elusive and annoying. Ironically, Sellers' best scene is Quilty playing German guidance counsellor Dr. Zempf, who uses an elaborate disguise to convince Humbert to allow Lolita into the school play. With a running time of two-and-a-half hours, the second half of the film also drags, especially during the road trip journey back from Lolita’s summer camp and their extended stay in New Hampshire.

But this is Stanley Kubrick, and even lower tier Stanley is the stuff of great cinema. Despite its faults Lolita is still essential viewing.

Lolita is available on Blu-ray from Warner Home Entertainment.

Tuesday, 3 May 2011

Kind Hearts and Coronets

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) dir. Robert Hamer
Starring: Dennis Price, Alec Guinness, Valerie Hobson

***½

By Alan Bacchus

The battle between classes has been the source of conflict for so many great British stories (both literature and film). And in terms of comedy, has class warfare ever been made into a blacker or more sublime comedy than this?

Louis Mazzini (Price) is the runt of the noble D’Ascoyne family, a man whose mother married ‘beneath her’ and was thus shunned and excised from the family and their fortune. After the shameful treatment of her mother upon her untimely death, Mazzini makes it his life’s ambition to kill everyone in the snobbish family and assert his right and title within the family.

It’s a heinous plot of eight first degree murders plotted for years, but when told with such gentlemanly class and articulation, the acts seems like jolly good fun instead of horrific violence. We get to see each act of murder, conceived in the most creative ways by Mazzini to look like accidents. Since this whole farce is told to us through voiceover on the day before Mazzini is due to be executed for murder, we know it ends badly for the man. But the fun here is the journey of sweet revenge, which is served extra cold by director Robert Hamer.

It’s easy to see why Louis hates the family so maliciously. The smug gentlemanly spitefulness of the twit-ish D’Ascoyne family is laid on so thick, we just want to smack the many faces of Alec Guinness with a spanner or throw him under a lorry.

Guinness, who famously played eights members of the D’Ascoyne family in heavy but unobtrusive makeup, is deservedly lauded. This performance came long before Peter Sellers did the trick three times in Dr. Strangelove and most certainly before Eddie Murphy did it in Coming to America and the Klumps movies. Dennis Price is much lesser known than Guinness, but his overly gentlemanly and polite persona perfectly disarms us to the grisly acts of murder he commits.

If anything, the film suffers on the over reliance of Mazzini’s narration. There’s probably more words from the narrator than any other character in the movie. Practically everything in Mazzini’s mind is told to us from his confession in the present. But considering the complex and ambitious plotting, as well as the time period spanning several years and encompassing several characters whom we meet only for brief seconds, there’s really no other way to pass along such information without filling the dialogue with dull exposition. It's also comedy, so we don't mind forgiving this crutch.

In the end, Mazzini succumbs to his own sword. In his desire to be included in nobility and assume his birthright, he comes to embody the same bloodsucking entitlement he condemned in his victims. The irony and drollness of these affairs is the stuff of classic British class-comedies – the same kind of humour Alfred Hitchcock honed for decades in his blackest comedies.

Wednesday, 20 April 2011

Casino Jack

Casino Jack (2010) dir. George Hickenlooper
Starring: Kevin Spacey, Barry Pepper, Rachelle Lefevre, Jon Lovitz, Kelly Preston

***

By Alan Bacchus

Perhaps three stars doesn’t quite do justice to the tremendous achievement of turning this complex story – the heinous real-life actions of super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff – into a sharp, scathing and satirical feature film.

The story of Jack Abramoff (Kevin Spacey), the wily Republican lobbyist who, for however short a time, exploited just about every loophole in American capitalism to establish a wealthy empire, was made into a head-spinning but entertaining comprehensive documentary by Alex Gibney just a year prior to this film. Hell, it even had the same name – Casino Jack – with the subtitle, The United States of Money. The dramatized version could have gone a number of different ways, with numerous stories to be told about the rise and fall of Abramoff, and director Hickenlooper and his filmmaking team confidently find the absolute right tone through which to tell this story.

Hickenlooper begins with Abramoff already established as a super-lobbyist. He’s exploited the low minimum wage laws in the US-controlled Marianas Islands to amass a small fortune, the fruits of which he uses to cozy up to a number of influential congressmen, including the now infamous Tom De Lay. Next up for Abramoff is the cash cow that is Indian casinos. Because of Native American land sovereignty, the casinos can operate with little interference or regulation from the government.

Writer Norman Snider and director Hickenlooper do a remarkable job transforming this story into a very carefully calculated black comedy, the tone of which generates laughs, and most importantly, gets to the heart of how and why Abramoff was able to defraud so much money from the American tax payers. It’s the basis of American capitalism, a system which, for good and bad, encourages people like Abramoff to walk the fine moral and ethical line in order to squeeze as much money out of the system as possible.

Hickenlooper keeps a brisk pace jet-setting around the world to follow his characters. Miraculously, most of this film was shot in Toronto, creatively using Canadian locations to double for numerous international locations, including Miami, Scotland, Washington and more, all contributing the full-scale scope of their influence.

But it’s the performance of Kevin Spacey, who was deservedly nominated for a Golden Globe this year, that makes this film a success. It's a terrific show-offy performance, his best in a decade. Spacey moves between an affable wannabe with delusions of being a Hollywood movie character like the Godfather and the ruthless businessman/entrepreneur only a country like the United States could create. Barry Pepper plays Abramoff’s loose-cannon right-hand man, Mike Scanlan, who makes a wonderful supporting character. Both men are portrayed as naive frat boys intoxicated by money and power and supremely cocky and brazen, amplifying their performances to the extreme for the sake of comedy and to complement the astonishing level of immaturity that brought them down.

Sadly, George Hickenlooper died at a young age last year, before the film even received its theatrical release. It's a shame, but his legacy is strong. Other than Casino Jack, he will also always be remembered for his great Apocalypse Now documentary Hearts of Darknness.

Casino Jack is available on Blu-ray and DVD from E1 Entertainment in Canada.

Monday, 24 January 2011

SUNDANCE 2011: The Devil's Double

The Devil’s Double (2011) dir. Lee Tamahori
Starring: Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier, Raad Rawi

***

By Alan Bacchus

After the very public outing of Lee Tamahori's personal problems, it’s so very gratifying to praise his latest film, The Devil’s Double, a Belgian film made far far away from Hollywood. Though it’s not a return to the tour-de-force form of Once Were Warriors, it’s certainly a giant leap above sell outs Die Another Day or xXx 2. The true story of Uday Saddam Hussein, the spoiled rotten son of the former Iraqi dictator, a sadistic loose cannon, whose rampage of torture, rape, and murder in the pre-Gulf War days made him infamous and legendary.

Tamahori seems to channel his own now very personql hedonistic demons into his portrayal of Hussein. He turns this story into a gluttonously biopic cum action film, striving for the same shamelessly over-indulgence as say, Brian De Palma’s Scarface but grounded in the same absurd realities of The Last King of Scotland.

Dominic Cooper is simply delicious in the dual role as Uday as well as his double Latif, who in real life was an old school friend of Uday’s but was kidnapped from his family and held hostage for years to be his political double.

As Uday, Cooper plays his bombastic psychopath with high energy. And as Latif, Cooper is able to dial down his rage into an nail-biting internalization of his emotions. Though the physical difference in character is represented only by Uday’s buck teeth and combed down haircut, Cooper’s subtle differences in performance is more than enough for us to distinguish each character.

While there’s some astonishingly gory violence displayed on screen, Tamahori cranks it up so far, it spills over for comedic purposes. Mondo sex, drugs, bullets and blood taken to its extreme to counterplay the unbelievable disregard for humanity which occurred in real life. However grotesque Tamahori challenges us to treat Uday Hussein as entertainment and succeeds.

Tuesday, 26 October 2010

Three Kings

Three Kings (1999) dir, David O Russell
Starring: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Spike Jonze, Ice Cube

****

By Alan Bacchus

David O Russell’s now legendary on set behaviour notwithstanding, he’s a fantastic filmmaker, and Three Kings, a tonally ambitious black comedy/ action film is one of the great political satires of the past 15 years.

It’s the end of the first Iraq War, an event signified by the absurd first line from Mark Wahlberg “are we shooting people?”, after which Wahlberg’s characer Sgt Troy Barlow hits a shooting duck Iraqi in the chest from far far away. After a rather fun rock and roll montage sequence portraying the victory like the US just won the Super Bowl, we’re also introduced to Major Archie Gates (Clooney), Sgt Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) and Pvt Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze) who, using a treasure map in found in a captured Iraqi soldier’s ass, go awol in search of Saddam Hussein’s secret stash of Gold.

The foursome (yeah, it should really be called ‘Four Kings’) find Saddam’s once hidden bunker and the cooperation of the freed Iraqi citizens who help them move the gold bars. But when the Saddam’s soldiers attack the citizens, the Bush-ordered cease fire prevents them from intervening. Caught been personal ethics, military duties and their own monetary greed Gates and the gang gradually turn themselves into a sort of Seven Samurai fighting for the freedom of the Iraqis.

The opening act is especially inspired. The introduction of the US presence in Iraq and the almost casuality-free easy victory on the part of the Americans over Hussein’s army is characterized with sharp absurd humour. Same with the global connectness of Iraq with American culture. The site of Iraqi soldiers helping the three Americans load gold bars into Louis Vutton bags, for example, or the room full of exotic automobiles Gates gets to choose from to help rescue Barlow from capture are examples of the pitch perfect absurdities of that war. Barlow’s absurdly comic phone call to his wife using a found junk cell in his makeshift cell typifies the measured balance between comedy, political commentary and disturbing violence and torture.

The men on a mission actually begins like a refashioning of Kelly’s Heroes – that is, a group of dissillusioned soldiers looking to score a buck to spite the war. It’s a great film to compare and contract. In 1970, politics were much different. For Heroes, it was during Vietnam and it reflects the distinctly 60’s government-hating attitude of liberals. In Russell’s film in the second and third acts the character find their heart and their principles, stripping itself of the 60’s cynicism toward new millenium global activism.

When the Kings turn good and move toward the right side responsibility to military and country, the film threatens to lose it’s edge. Miraculously the satire remains, and at the same time we’re also treated to a number of thrilling action sequences and a heartbreaking series of events in the finale. The mortar sequence sequence in particular is beautifully shot by innovative DP Newton Thomas Sigel and edited by Robert Lambert. And the final moments of Pvt Vig are surprisingly emotional.

And Cudos to George Clooney who managed to hide his well publicized displeasure with his director delivering his first real ‘George Clooney’ performance outside of ER. It was also a great year for Spike Jonze, who turned in some fine acting chops, before he went on to direct the equally wonderful Being John Malkovich that year. It's interesting to see how the satire plays in light of the new Iraqi War which by contrast is a clusterfuck of enormous proportions - an added layer of depth and poignancy to an already intellectually stimulating film.

‘Three Kings’ is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Video

Sunday, 10 October 2010

The Player

The Player (1992) dir. Robert Altman
Starring: Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Vincent D’Onofrio, Fred Ward, Peter Gallagher, Cynthia Stevenson

****

By Alan Bacchus

The Player was a turning point in the career of Robert Altman, a dramatic shift from relative obscurity in the 80’s to a renaissance of great pictures in the 90’s and 00’s comparable to the late career work of Clint Eastwood. It’s no slag on Altman really though, as the cinema of Robert Altman had no real place in the decade of the shitdom that was the 80’s.

But Altman was never out of work, in fact, under the radar he produced a number of acclaimed and intriguing works including Tanner ’88, Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and Secret Honor. But in 1992, it was the old Altman, back in the form of his greatest picture Nashville, 17 years prior - a multi-layered multi-character complex story of comedy and tragedy of modern Hollywood movie-making.

One of the consistencies of Hollywood over the years has been its ability to self-analyze, critique and satirize itself. From Hollywood Cavalcade, A Star is Born, Sunset Boulevard to the Bad and the Beautiful, Hollywood could always take its own pulse more accurately than anyone else. The Player is as sharp, biting and scathing as all of the above films - mixing some sharply tuned noirish tension with a wicked sense of deadpan comedy.

Tim Robbins plays a studio executive Griffin Mill who’s one step away from the chopping block to be replaced by his rival Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher). He’s also being threatened by a disgruntled writer in a series of nasty postcards. When he discovers the whom he thinks is the writer, he confronts him, then accidentally kills him in a heated argument. While covering up the murder he finds himself in the company of the widow, June Gudmundsdottir (Greta Scacchi), whom he slow engages in a relationship with which then becomes a heated affair. But with the cops creeping up on him Griffin also has to negotiate his way out the predicament with his job, evade the cops and reconcile a former relationship with his story editor.

The celebrating opening clears off most of the complicated backstory in one remarkable unedited shot, a shot which also references Orson Welles’ grandiose opening in Touch of Evil. It’s one of a series of clever details and Hollywood references which are layered all over this film. Anyone even remotely familiar with how development works will chuckle at the script pitches which continually get thrown at Griffin, even at his worst moments.

Tim Robbins’ scattered and aloof performance as Griffin is arguably the best of his career. And the role call of quality cameos and bit players is still astounding. Vincent D’Onofrio’s violent confrontation of Griffin in the parking lot is incredibly tense – some of the best work he’s ever done. Watch out of Whoopi Goldberg’s hilarious performance as the very direct, though affable, police detective. And even her partner, Lyle Lovett who curiously skulks around the scenes is a scene stealer. Great character actors such as Brion James, Fred Ward, Dean Stockwell provide unsung and unflashy supporting performances not to mention Greta Scacchi’s very steamy bit as the alluring yet approachable June Gudmundsdottir. And who could forget Richard E. Grant’s fantastic pitch for 'Habeous Corpus', which would tie the film back on itself so cleverly at the end – an ironic twist which got reused and copied by numerous other films.

Altman’s distinct filmmaking style is front and centre, an auteur sensability which links up marvelously with all his other work. His ability to navigate multiple storylines, multiple characters, especially in the same space and same room is thing to behold in this picture. His now legendary techniques of overlapping sound contribute to a truly stereoscopic soundscape of dialogue, music and ambient noise.

It’s one of treasures of the 90’s which gets better and better over the years.

The Player is available on Blu-Ray from Warner Home Video.

Tuesday, 5 October 2010

World's Greatest Dad

World's Greatest Dad"(2009) dir. by Bobcat Goldthwait
Starring Robin Williams, Alexie Gilmour and Daryl Sabara

*1/2

By Blair Stewart

Reminding me of a salad I recently had that tossed bacon and blueberries together, "World's Greatest Dad" ruinously mixes a darkly-comedic plot with a cloying sense of morality near the film's end. The cloying morality would be the blueberries, damnit.

Robin Williams stars as present-day high-school poetry teacher Lance in a time and place where poetry is generally frowned upon. A failed writer of such rejected gems as "Door-to-Door Android" and "The Narcissist's Life Vest", Lance suffers with a funding axe looming over his program and a relationship with the hot art teacher Claire (Alexie Gilmour) still in the difficult early stages. Assailed by insecurities, Lance's buttons are further pushed by Kyle (Daryl Sabara), his only teenage son and a perverted, indolent shitstain of a human being. Kyle's failing studies and increasingly grody sexual tastes drive a wedge between father and son, where upon the plot takes a brilliant turn into the macabre (before flying off a cliff into the unforgiving wasteland I call Sanctimoniousburg). Lance responds by putting himself in a compromising position with his work and lifestyle improving as long as he maintains a fib about his son.

I won't spoil the obvious, but World's Greatest Dad, before the turn of plot, was biting in an amiable way and upon its reveal steadily shrinks its balls by becoming humane, sentimental and tedious. This begs the question: was Dr Strangelove humane when Slim Pickens straddled the H-bomb ('Hi There!') down to Ruskie soil? Was the ending of The Fireman's Ball sentimental? Is Borat tedious? If you're making a black comedy, particularly an indie with an old comedian in need of a splash in a marketplace where films battle against TiVos and Playstations for attention, shouldn't the laughs be braver? Burn everything to cinders and maybe salt the ground a little? Instead of Lance simply keeping his falsehood alive, why doesn't he go to the extreme hilarious lengths to keep the status quo? You might not win the box-office with this reasoning, but perhaps an Indie Spirit award and a solid week of sales on Netflix. Or my respect at the very, very least.

Now I don't have a problem with Robin Williams performance in World's Greatest Dad; his ADD is kept in check, and the ghosts of past terrible films never rear their head. Williams has been through the Hollywood ringer and would likely be happy to bellyflop into a low-budget satire. My issue is with writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait wanting to briefly titillate his audience with some naughty bits only to deliver a toothless, sappy second-half that takes birdseed potshots at trendy bemoaners and tragedy media. Additionally, outside of the leading roles the film is peopled with background characters bereft of character and dull as cardboard, an unforgivable sin when the foreground players stop laughing.

The work of Williams and Sabara (who's role here might be more than a stone's throw from his Spy Kids" days) aside, "World's Greatest Dad" is an ignoble failure.

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