Ham on Rye

Ham On Rye flew right under the radar and it's such a shame! This film deserves a lot more press than it got. It reminds me of the same sort of thrill I got when i first discovered "Mulholland Drive", back when it was more indie and Naomi Watts wasn't yet, well, "Naomi Watts".

This is a film for a pretty niche audience, but for those it was made for, boy will you be happy you found it. Very obscure, oddball, muted acid-trip type of cinema. You will know this film in a couple of years as memes from it make their way around social media. If you're in the mood for something weird and a bit of a mind-bend, put this on!

There is an air of unrest and subversion across it. It feels entirely new. When the girls speak about the wonders of getting older, the film vows to prove them wrong. Through Deuter's music it ramps up as a german fairytale. The entitlement such as going into strangers homes or being the powers to decide on boys fates shows it's about privilege, especially choosing who was worthy of ascension. She seemed to find it cruel and immoral. The film is sometimes 50s, sometimes 80s, sometimes today, or all at once. Same as how it shows multiple generations in relation to the event: the children lively and innocent. the teens nervous and bracing for it. the older kids lost and dazed. the old, zombies and shells. The event seems to allow the squares lucky to be chosen to disappear away into some orgy of paradise. It becomes metaphysical, not horror, or almost a quotation or subversion of horror. These scenes of openness in the park, the searching, being scoped out somehow to me feels as these eerie metaphysical horror films popular in the art house where 'It' is always near. Or it captures the heightened psychology of horror without the areas of fear. Look at the rocker guy viewed from afar, which was one of its powerful moments. In standard films he would be eaten one scene later by The Thing. Then, I could not not think of Vietnam and PTSD with the older kids. Were they never chosen and doomed to be there? There is a vacuum and divide between the chosen and not. Maybe why the phone message cuts out and why the father couldn't see him in college. Why the girls messages weren't received. It is some metaphysical fish tank of those inside versus outside. It would be the ones with means ascending society's ranks, the others without privilege left to rot. The funniest part of the film is how lame old people are in it, they are these pathetic dullards. There is also an ingenuity here for low budget that its emotional climax revolves around a balloon. That it is so gentle, simple, but startling of an image. The high concept creates an infinite budget by showing plain things with enormous implications. When going in I had expected a school dance comedy, that Tamberelli would be partying and rioting, Lori-Beth would be up to some wild sh-t, as the beginning seemed to promised in its notes and breadth. But these icons of Nickelodeon are there in trances and dazes in a purgatory awaiting the 'All That' reunion. I don't blame her for escaping the event as I would have done the same in order to mount a revolution from within.

This film seems mostly to be about the disappointment of getting older. The first half of the film is sureal and magical, it was also quite funny with bizarre existential questions being thrown around but never answered; I guess the subtext is: you don't need answer them because you're young. The second half of the film seems to be about the inevitable unfulfilled expectations and the loss of connection with people who have taken a different life path to you. Overall the first half is more enjoyable to watch and the second half is incredibly slow and down beat however, I think it leaves you feeling exactly what the film makers intended.

Oak Cliff Film Festival 2019 Greetings again from the darkness. Should I stay or should I go? Only it's not really your choice. Some bizarre ritual, or rite of passage (or no passage), is held to determine whether one is selected to venture into the world, or instead resigned to remaining a local forever.

We first see the teens clumped in their cliques, nervous energy palpable on the screen. Anxiety is prevalent but we aren't exactly sure why. Slowly each of the young folks makes their way to Monty's Deli - only, contrary to the title, it's not for the ham on rye. The typical awkward teenage social event is underway, only there is more at stake here than who will dance with who.

Director and writer Tyler Taormina and co-writer Eric Berger have delivered a scathing commentary not just on the suburbs, but of the realities faced by high schoolers all over. In every home town, some kids head off to college or off into the world in some other manner, while another group gets "left behind". What follows is a gap or void between those who leave and those who remain. In the film, the void even exists within families.

The film opens and closes with sequences in the community park. Young kids are quite normal - running, jumping and laughing. The older adults seem to be merely existing. There is an almost supernatural approach here by the filmmaker, but it does beg the question ... how much control do we have over our fate at that age, and are we accepting of our lot? Pretty interesting fodder for discussion.

I loved the half that looks and feels like a Richard Linklater film, but the David Lynch half got a bit annoying and was a bit tiresome. That must be so due to the fact that I adore Linklater while Lynch never really worked for me. All in all, by the end it started to hurt.