comedy

The "Worst" Title for a Great Little Film

Brandon Judell — Mon, 20 May 2024 00:55:53 +0000

The "Worst" Title for a Great Little Film Brandon Judell May 19, 2024 - 20:55

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If awards were handed out for the most impossibly difficult film title to remember, Joanna Arnow’s The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed would win hands down. Indeed, every time I want to recommend TFTTTFDSHP, I google “Richard Brody New Yorker Masterpiece” for the moniker of this wryly comical ode to consensual-female-sexual-submissiveness to pop up.

Yes, Mr. Brody, one of the current deans of film criticism, has praised to the hilt this feature, an offering at last year’s New York Film Festival that was also nominated for a Golden Camera at Cannes. Currently released in a handful of theaters, ones with hopefully extra-large marquees, it should be noted that Mr. Brody warns that TFTTTFDSHP is a “deceptively plain masterpiece.” He’s possibly indicating that unlike Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) or Coppola’s Godfather (1972), you might need a few hours or even days to realize you’ve just experienced a magnum opus.

With that realization achieved, you can now consider that if Woody Allen had been born a woman and had showcased nudity in his works, plus sported a strong “female gaze,” we might not need Ms. Arnow to direct films, but since Woody wasn’t, doesn’t, and hasn’t, Ms. Arnow fills a huge vacancy.

Clearly, there are many similarities between these two auteurs. For instance, Arnow’s opening frame announces her feature with white lettering on a black background, and her lead’s Jewish-American family could be stand-ins for Woody’s in Radio Days (1987). Arnow also inhabits the lead character as Allen often did until he didn’t. Her Ann, not unlike Annie Hall’s Alvy Singer, is at times a borderline needy, nerdy, loveable Jewish schlimazel but without most of the philosophical frills.

For example, Ann’s opening nude, horizontal monologue is spoken as she’s rubbing her genitalia back and forth against her semi-slumbering, older lover Allen (Scott Cohen). Amidst furniture a few steps below Ikea, she states with a joyfully monotone delivery: “I love how you never care if I come. You never do anything for me . . . You go to sleep right after we finish.”

Allen: “Hmmmmmm.”

Ann: “Do you think people can change?”

While Woody might showcase the skyline of Manhattan to the thunderous notes of “Rhapsody in Blue,” Arnow’s tribute is more a battered Valentine to the Brooklyn subway stop, the Smith-Ninth Streets Station, situated above the Gowanus Canal. The Canal, you might recall, was some time ago recognized as one of the most polluted bodies of water in the United States, famed for its abundance of fecal coliforms.

Excretory matter aside, this is the tale of a woman . . . a Wesleyan graduate with exposed bra straps. . . who would remain invisible to most of us whether we passed her on the street, sat next to her on the subway, or spent three years with her in our homeroom class. Her family has given up on her, her employers don’t realize she’s been with them for three years, and even her food lacks color.

For dinner, Ann regularly squeezes out the queasily brown Maya Kaimal Everyday Dal from a pouch, a product placement that might actually hurt the company’s sales.

So you won’t be surprised by her response when her bedmate asks, “What do you like?” Again in monotone, Ann responds: “I like when you tell me what to do…. I like things. I just can’t think of them at the moment.”

Distinctly, the storyline doesn’t matter that much here. It’s basically one deliciously understated droll vignette following another with a few rueful undercurrents.

After nine years with Allen, Ann, now 33, is ready to experiment with other Masters. Yes, from running into walls on command to dressing as a farm animal to Zooming her butt across town, please note that our eyeglassed heroine is in control of the situations. “But,” you query, “is she ready to give up control for love without domination? Is she ready for someone who is not a ‘sex friend’?”

Maybe. Maybe not. But either way, there’s no argument that Joanna Arnow has arrived as both an actress and a director, one that you will want to be subsumed by in feature after feature.

(Favorite moment: Ann sitting alone on a bench late at night at a deserted subway station. She’s licking a melting chocolate ice cream cone and starts smiling at an inner thought, and then laughing, and then . . . .)

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Drive On

Gary Lucas — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 22:54:23 +0000

Drive On Gary Lucas April 27, 2024 - 18:54

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Fantastic film worth every minute of its nearly three-hour length. Director Radu Jude, whose 2021 feature Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn was so delicious a send-up of woke culture Romanian-style, has made the Film of the Year, if not the last hundred years (give or take a couple, ok). Scabrous, profane, bleak, and blackly hilarious satire lovingly hand-rolled by Rude into one heck of a thrill ride to nowheresville that utilizes a lot of zany jump cuts and cut-ups a la Godard, herky-jerky hand-held camerawork, and random quotations from all sorts of sources poetic and otherwise to continuously disrupt the narrative.

Ilinca Manolache as put-upon, tough as nails gum-chewing taxi driver/PA to a film company named Angela Raducana (and her male social media alter ego Bobita, a bald-headed bearded Andrew Tate-like toxic douchebag with furry eyebrows digitally achieved through her iPhone app ) is a real Force of Nature and should win every best actor award on the planet this year.

What adds so much to this film is the intercutting of scenes in color from a 1981 Romanian romantic drama about a female taxi driver and her lovers entitled Angela Moves On, where actual locations used in that film (which posits a dreamy socialist workers' paradise) are contrasted with the somewhat frowsy, fly-blown black and white industrial vistas of the same Bucharest locations today. To further mix up the mise-en-scene, Radu has Angela meet her actual taxi-driving doppelgänger from the earlier film, now living with her husband, the romantic male lead from that same film, both of them aging not all that gracefully, but both still spry and delighted by the coincidence of meeting their younger counterpart.

Angela toils relentlessly daily, driving hither and yon all day through Bucharest, shifting gears in a stop-start repetitive motion, wending her way through the slow-moving traffic in a POV shot filmed directly next to her in the cab of her van, a shot whose duration eventually leaves you exhausted (if not nauseous)--not that far afield from Straub-Huillet's 1972 History Lessons where the protagonist endlessly shifts gears as he meanders through the streets of Rome.

Throughout the day, we observe various Chantal Ackerman-like slices o' life vis a vis Angela's quotidian behavior at gas stations, fast food joints, restroom toilets, in the bed of her boyfriend for a quickie etc., while she struggles to run errands for her local film studio bosses, with whom she's hoping to ingratiate herself and rise beyond her ascribed entry-level role as a menial gofer. This preening gaggle of media hacks are uniformly portrayed as narcissistic boorish pricks groveling in the service of a monolithic Austrian industrial complex, whose marketing director, the haughty and imperious German Nina Hoss (Tarr), has hired them to film a public service announcement about worker safety that will hopefully absolve the company of any liabilities in a pending lawsuit filed by a local worker injured in an industrial accident at one of their factories in Bucharest.

The film's final scene is one of those jaw-dropping 15-minute or so long takes on the order of Bela Tarr where everything in the frame (including the shifting weather, something that couldn't have been foreseen) conspires to create one glorious, comedic mess as the Romanian film crew tries to repeatedly browbeat and coach the hapless accident victim and his skeptical family into reluctantly mouthing (for a mere pittance) what will prove to be incriminating statements about the accident's circumstances that will surely be used against the family in court so as to deny their pending lawsuit and get the Austrians off the hook from paying out a fortune, while Angela blithely films one of her obnoxious bragging Bobita-rants off to the side (I'm still cracking up as I write this from the sheer sardonic comedy of this scene). I cannot say enough positive things about this film. Jude reinvigorates Cinema with a fuck-you cheeky impertinent swagger not really seen since Bande A Part.

If you want to see a work that exactly describes the Way We Are Today, Here in the Western World, Eastern European division, you could do no better than see this film.

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The Day Originality Died

Brandon Judell — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 22:29:31 +0000

The Day Originality Died Brandon Judell July 23, 2019 - 18:29

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I kept thinking throughout Peter Parlow's cleverly conceived "comedy" that I should be laughing. "I really need a coffee for this!" was my second and third thoughts. Then: "Hey, I bet those indieWire critics and J. Hoberman guffawed into their popcorn when reviewing this."

Let me go check what others actually opined.

Variety's Jessica Kiang:

"An intellectually ticklish, micro-budget, low-grade-video movie with metatextual wit to burn." Not bad.

Hollywood Reporter: "[I]t's easy to walk away from The Plagiarists thinking nothing of much significance was accomplished. [However,] the film improves upon reflection." True . . . true.

This plotless cornucopia of semi-pseudo-intellectual ponderings begins with a car giving up in a bewintered countryside. The very white Anna (Lucy Kaminsky) and Tyler (Eamon Monaghan), lovers and inhabitants of the aforementioned auto, immediately start letting loose on each other. (Rocky Horror's Brad and Janet had to cope with a similar, yet more musical, mechanical mishap.)

The insecure Anna, by the way, a former shoplifter of panties from Victoria's Secret, is in the midst of writing a memoir-based novel while the cocksure Tyler is a would-be director, whose main gig at the moment is as a DP on an Evian ad.

"I'm supposed to be back tonight. Philly," he notes.

So what is a couple to do but bicker and freeze to death? Thankfully, Clip (the superb Michael "Clip" Payne), a black resident of the area, shows up and invites the duo to his home, including the use of his bathroom down the hall, and his phone to get a mechanic.

Uh-oh, is this guy "sketchy?" Anna wonders. Is she stuck in a Get Out scenario in reverse? And why is there a white child playing upstairs in his house? Is this Clip's child, is he a babysitter, or . . . ?

Happily, Clip might just be what he seems, a nice guy who lets the couple dine and sleep over, while he has sex with an unseen, rather orgasmically noisy woman in the room nearby. Earlier in the evening, though, Tyler snoops around the house, coming across highly sophisticated but dated camera equipment while the host beguiles Anna with tales of his youth:

"Little did I know then that every detail of this landscape, and every single person living in it, would forever be lodged in my memory with a ring as true as perfect pitch."

Anna also cooks dinner:

"Look at the sauce. It looks like vomit."

The next day, the auto is fixed, and everyone goes back to their everyday routines in their proper locales.

Jump ahead to six months. It's summer, and Tyler and Annie are back on the road. They're driving to visit a friend, Allison (the deliciously quirky Emily Davis), heading up to the country again. While Tyler chats away on varied topics with unearned bravado such as the current disavowal of the Shaken Baby Syndrome and the nonexistence of sex trafficking, Annie is reading Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle, Book 3. Suddenly, a look of disturbance creeps onto her brow. Everything Clip had told her about his life is taken word for word from this acclaimed work. He had plagiarized Knausgaard's life. Why? she wants to know with a fury that knows no end.

Even after arriving at Allison's, her anger doesn't abate. But, hey! isn't her own manuscript, which cannibalizes her friends', although pleasantly, plagiarized in a way, too? And what about Tyler's tormenting monologues? He’s no doubt unconsciously based them on half-heard call-in shows, and his delivery is very Seinfeld on crack.

Then what about the rest of us? Have any of us ever had an original thought? As Mark Twain noted, "What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before."

So, admittedly, the greater the distance in time I'm away from having watched The Plagiarists, the more I enjoy it. (I mean who's still pondering Dark Phoenix five minutes after the credits roll?) Possibly, that's just what the screenwriters, James N. Kienitz and Robin Schavoir, and the film's hipsterish, Woody-Allenesque director desired.

Filmed in a week over 6 months, Parlow describes his effort as "a contemporary story that happens to be captured on old videotape which still exists as new videotape ('deadstock' or 'new-old stock' as it is called on E-Bay)." I’m sure that means a whole lot to some folks, otherwise why put it in the press notes? Consequently or not, I will be running to view Parlow's next offering, which hopefully I'll relish simultaneously as I view it.

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The Big Sick

Dusty Wright — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 15:53:13 +0000

The Big Sick Dusty Wright July 15, 2017 - 11:53

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Some romantic comedies transcend the mundane and crawl into your heart and stay lodged in there forever. The Big Sick is one such movie. Hard to imagine how a "coma comedy" could work, but in the able hands of veteran comedy filmmakers Judd Apatow (Trainwreck, This Is 40) and Barry Mendel (Trainwreck, The Royal Tenebaums), director Michael Showalter (Hello My Name Is Doris), and actor/writer Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley), the outcome is unforgettable, especially given that it's based on Nanjiani and his wife's near-fatal relationship.

The film tells the story of Pakistan-born aspiring comedian and Uber driver Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani) who hooks up with grad student Emily (Zoe Kazan) after one of his standup sets. However, what they thought would be just a casual one-night fling quickly develops into a promising relationship, even with the cultural complications of Kumail's traditional Muslim parents. The revolving dinner scenes of his parents trying to fix him up with a "proper" Muslim bride are hilarious. But when tragedy strikes Emily with a mystery illness and she ends up in a coma, it forces Kumail to navigate the medical crisis with her parents, Beth and Terry (Holly Hunter and Ray Romano) who he's never met, while dealing with his own emotional tug-of-war between his family and his heart.

Miss Hunter and Mr. Romano are exceptional as the bickering couple, exposing their own marital issues while dealing with their daughter's medical condition and her "ethnic" ex-boyfriend. The chemistry between all three actors is fabulous and truly the centerpiece that defines this indie gem throughout.

The Big Sick will restore your confidence in smart filmmaking. Not to be missed.

Woody Allen's Godson Tries to Direct a Comedy

Brandon Judell — Mon, 17 Oct 2016 15:01:50 +0000

Woody Allen's Godson Tries to Direct a Comedy Brandon Judell October 17, 2016 - 11:01

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Quincy Rose, the godson of Woody Allen and the offspring of the late Mickey Rose (an Allen collaborator on films such as Bananas and a writer for The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson), has just scribed, directed, produced, and edited his second feature film, Friends Effing Friends Effing Friends (FEFEF) so roll out the red carpet and blow the horns. Such an amazing lack of talent has seldom been contained in a mere 117 minutes.

This is not to propose that Mr. Rose is totally bereft of any artistry. The trailer for his initial effort, Miles to Go (2012), in which he stars, displays an engagingly high-strung neuroticism in his Allenesque take on heterosexual relationships, and you can't help but wish he had cast himself as a lead in FEFEF.

But before I decimate the theatrics and the writing, let's confront the plot. Two childhood buddies -- one circumcised, the other not -- who used to compare their genitalia as children, are still arguing about the beauty and length of their members two decades later while in a restaurant with one of their girlfriends. "I have the Kate Moss of penises," avows Jacob (Tyler Dawson). His buddy Steve (Graham Skipper) argues back that uncut penises grow at least an inch longer than their unsheathed pals. Laura (Jillian Leigh), Steve's live-in mate, thinks this is all a little bit gay and decides to fix up Jacob with her best friend Sarah (Christina Gooding), who lives with a sexy blonde roommate Camille (Vanessa Dubasso).

Before you can spell "Spongebob Squarepants" backwards, most of the characters have kissed, performed cunnilingus, plus blown and schtupped each other. There's one threesome, lots of drinking, several bare breasts, and Steve spouting Trumpisms so often, you expect Billy Bush to show up: "I would totally let her sh*t on my chest." There's also "I've been dying to f*ck her p*ssy for years" plus the occasional shout-out: "What's up, Motherfucker?"

Jacob's replies include: "You're talking to Penis Boy" and "Get out. Get laid. Get a rub and tug."

The whole shebang is sophomoric with little wit, bland-in-the-extreme casting, haphazard direction, annoying editing, and vomitatious writing. Dubasso as a nymphette and Gooding as a gourmet cook/gal pal, however, do rise above the celluloid muck that Rose has splattered across the screen, but not often enough to salvage this pointless exploration of desire and cheating among the mindless.

To be fair, there is some humor here, but it is unintentional and found in the production notes. Rose writes, "As I sought money for the project, I got polarized feedback on the script. I had one guy tell me he hated it." The budding auteur goes on to convince himself that it is not the quality of the writing that's at fault but that he is hitting "too close to home." He then notes his inspirations: Truffaut, The Squid and the Whale, and Woody's Husbands and Wives (1992). It's sort of like the creator of Hostess Twinkies saying he was inspired by the goings-on at Le Cordon Bleu.

The good news is that the young director's next feature is titled The Narcissists. Clearly, this is more familiar material that will help Rose find his footing and thrive.

(Friends Effing Friends Effing Friends, 2016 Manhattan Film Fest Winner - Best Feature Romantic Drama, is currently on VOD.)

Stephen Frears Hits All the Right Notes with Florence Foster Jenkins

Brandon Judell — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 18:21:57 +0000

Stephen Frears Hits All the Right Notes with Florence Foster Jenkins Brandon Judell August 18, 2016 - 14:21

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Totally relaxed in his Ritz-Carleton suite on Central Park South, his arms spread wide on a rather tasteful couch, Stephen Frears held court not at all like the monarch in his biggest success, The Queen, (2006). His press conference for his latest effort, Florence Foster Jenkins, will take place one hour later with about 40 journalists in attendance. His stars -- Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, and The Big Bang Theory’s Simon Helberg -- would then be asked 95% of the questions. Not surprising. Directors, for the most, part do not drive traffic to web sites, sadly, even ones as near legendary as Frears.

Besides helming six of his past female leads to Academy-Award-nominated performances (Michelle Pfeiffer and Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons, Anjelica Huston and Annette Bening in The Grifters, plus Judi Dench in both Philomena and Mrs. Henderson Presents) and one Oscar win (Helen Mirren as the aforementioned queen), Frears has also persevered as one of the moral compasses of Great Britain from the late 1960s on.

St. Ann’s, his TV documentary from 1969, devastatingly explores Nottingham’s moldy, damp slums. In one memorable scene a teacher notes how her students often sit in the school’s bathroom stalls until she coaxes them back into the classroom. For these children, these were their only moments of silence and privacy in their lives.

Was Frears a revolutionary back then?

“Well, I suppose but in a rather unthought-out way,” Frears notes. “They showed St. Ann’s in Nottingham quite recently, and I was there. It was packed with people who’d come to see the world they grew up in. You know, no one terribly likes the modern world, but the old world was dreadful. So all progress is good and bad.”

Frears afterwards moved away from documentaries, working solely in TV, until My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), based on a screenplay by the then unknown writer Hanif Kureishi, came out and was a surprise worldwide hit. This tale of a young Pakistani man (Gordon Warnecke), his alcoholic father, his at times unsavory relatives, and his love for a white boyfriend (Daniel Day-Lewis), who was formerly a fascist, has hardly dated at all. Besides being revelatory in its depiction of a gay relationship, its respectful, yet unfawning, look at immigrants trying to make it in a new country is straight out of the headlines.

“I was so naïve that to me it was a film about economics,” Frears recalled. “To me, it was about Mrs. Thatcher. The sex . . . I learned about gay sex, which I don’t know much about anyway, from being in the Royal Court Theatre. I used to look at the gay boys and think they were having a much better time than I had. When I made the film, that’s what it reminded me of. So I never grew up thinking of it that gay men died or committed suicide. It was before AIDS, of course.”

In a rave review in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael was moved to write of Laundrette, “It’s an enormous pleasure to see a movie that’s really about something, and that doesn’t lay on any syrupy coating to make the subject go down easily.”

That’s a description of most of Frears’s works, including Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987), Prick Up Your Ears (1987) (a biopic about playwright Joe Orton), and Dirty Pretty Things (2002). Yet while many of his films deal with outsiders trying to find some foothold in society, there is no consistent Frears’s look. Unlike with Fellini or Hitchcock, you can’t identify a Frears’s film stylistically.

“I was brought up to direct what was in front of me,” he explained, “so I was brought up to be a working director.” The screenplays he chooses to direct dictate the visuals.

It’s no surprise then that Florence Foster Jenkins has a slight Woody-Allen-esque feel. The locale is New York City, the era is the 1940s, and the eponymous heroine is an extremely wealthy socialite, who deems herself an extraordinarily talented opera singer. She, however, is extraordinarily wrong on that account. Yet because she is wealthy, generous, and so good-natured, no one will contradict that notion, especially her husband of sorts, Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), and her pianist Cosme McMoon (Simon Helberg).

The film is a comedy with harrowing undertones. Frears and his screenwriter Nicholas Martin want us to laugh at Florence, yet adore her and support her antics. We are to condone the friends who egg Florence on and the critics who accept money to praise her in print while we simultaneously condemn them for being insincere and unethical. Yet the reviewer who reveals the truth about the would-be diva, Earl Wilson, is seen as villainous yet respectable. Nearly ever character here has a duality about him or her.

Serendipitously, the day before the film opened this past Friday and before it earned close to $7 million over the weekend, Lesley Brill’s book, The Ironic Filmmaking of Stephen Frears, was released. Brill advocates, “Irony reverses romance. In varying degrees, it is always important in Frears’s films. Even in those with ostensibly romantic conditions, a trace of uncertainty or an ironic countermovement remains.”

Does Frears agree with that his cinema is a cinema of irony? If so, is this because he finds the world so hypocritical?

You want me to be rather serious,” Frears chuckles. ‘There’s a wonderful line of Billy Wilder’s: ‘It’s very, very kind, but I think you have mistaken me for a serious person.’ Of course, I find the world hypocritical. How could you not?”

And now some more of our chatter unfiltered:

BJ: So you do agree with Brill’s title?

SF: Oh, my God! You’ve read the book?

BJ: No, I’ve been able to get some pages off Google Books. If you allow me, Brill continues in semi-academic fashion: “In strongly ironic fictions, cynicism, corruption, and death dominate innocence, health, and fertility. The strong divisions between the good and evil characters of romance become blurred, as do clear moral distinctions. . . . Knowledge leads to truth and clarity in romantic fictions; in ironic ones — and this is especially important to keep in mind in discussing Frears’s films—increasing information usually produces increasing uncertainty. Where romantic miracles deliver redeeming grace, ironic coincidences simply undo what is hopeful. Structurally, ironic narratives do not so much conclude as simply stop, often at some arbitrary looking moment, with little resolution.”

SF: Which side am I on? (Laughs)

BJ: I think you are on a seesaw. (Frears laughs.) With this film, parts can be seen as cynical, but parts are highly sympathetic.

SF: That’s what’s you’re to do. To balance the two elements.

BJ: What’s strange about this film is if you give a synopsis, it can almost be a tragedy.

SF: Yes.

BJ: You’re not sure how much to laugh or . . . .

SF: But when you see it . . . .

BJ: You can see the film and not realize it’s a tragedy until you think about Florence’s life afterwards. Was it hard for you to get the tonal thing going?

SF: Getting that balance is what we were trying to do.

BJ: Are you at this point of your career where you feel you know you can get it? There’s no challenge too great?

SF: Well, it’s in the script. I knew it was there. Lurking.

Where's John Wayne When You Need Him?

Brandon Judell — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 05:41:16 +0000

Where's John Wayne When You Need Him? Brandon Judell August 11, 2015 - 01:41

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"You think I'll sit back and do nothing as you try to eat me like a juicy grasshopper?" shouts Richard, the thuggish head of the Ugandan crime syndicate, the Tiger Mafia.

This unraveling gent has been raving ever since his brother was captured that afternoon by Captain Alex and his commandos. That Richard discovers his wife was spared provides no solace to him. In fact, just the opposite. Richard yells at her, "I don't need you. I have dozens of wives. I only have one brother." Then he bellows to his second-in-command, "Instead of my brother, you saved this bitch." He then shoots his spouse. (This isn't as sexist as it sounds since Richard tends to shoot everyone whether friend or foe.)

Sadly, this drug-dealing villain is not the only one on the set who's psychotically unsettled. There's the hired gun who notes, "I'm a mercenary from Russia. I came here to kill. If you don't give me people to kill, I quit." Since the film's budget [around $200] didn't allow for the importing of a Muscovite actor or at least someone who even looks like they've even heard of Vladimir Putin, a short Ugandan plays him.

Exuberantly directed, shot, and edited by Isaac Nabwana in the small, electricity-disabled town of Wakaliga, Who Killed Captain Alex? became an instant cult success in the streets of Uganda back in 2005, even though it was never shown in theatres. Instead, besides street sellers hawking the DVD, the action spoof were screened on TV sets in certain clubs/shacks while a VJ (video joker) added his own commentary to the film. The VJ might note when there's a rare moment the cast isn't being shot at or buildings not being blown up: "Action is coming, I promise you!" Or when a young woman is singing on the stage at a downscale restaurant, he'll bellow over both the music and the dialogue: "Sing Dolly Parton! We love Dolly Parton."

The current cut of the film -- an offering at the always outrageous Fantasia International Film Festival (July 14 to August 5) in Montreal -- includes the VJ dialogue, which is seldom less than a hoot. (For a complete history of the film and its sociological underpinnings, check out Sam McPheeters's superb article on Vox.com.)

Clearly, what Plan 9 from Outer Space is to sci-fiers, Captain Alex is to Rambo-esque action aficionados. The film opens with the bombing of New York City for some odd reason. Then with the vigor and expertise of suburban kids playing Cowboys and Indians in the backyards of the 1950s, the cast here runs to and fro, yelling and killing and dying while deliciously cheesy special effects are edited in over their dinner-theater theatrics.

Oscar Wilde once insisted, "Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all." Nabwana proves him wrong. This offering has already been downloaded from YouTube over 258,994 gleeful times the last I checked.

By the way, Captain Alex does get killed.

The Death of Feminism (Not Really!)

Brandon Judell — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 03:01:04 +0000

The Death of Feminism (Not Really!) Brandon Judell July 21, 2015 - 23:01

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Judd Apatow's Trainwreck doesn't truly merit its title until this comic venture totally goes off the blasted tracks in its final quarter. What starts out as a hilarious consideration of modern mating rituals, sort of a distaff take on Apatow's earlier comedies (e.g. 40-Year-Old Virgin; Knocked Up), winds up as a queasy quantum leap backwards into the pages of Marabel Morgan's 1973 multimillion bestseller, The Total Woman:

"One of your husband's most basic needs is for you to be physically attractive to him. He loves your body; in fact, he literally craves it . . . .

"Many a husband rushes off to work leaving his wife slumped over a cup of coffee in her grubby undies. His once sexy bride is now wrapped in rollers and smells like bacon and eggs. All day long he's surrounded at the office by dazzling secretaries who emit clouds of perfume.

"This is all your husband asks from you. He wants the girl of his dreams to be feminine, soft, and touchable when he comes home. That's his need. If you are dumpy, stringy, or exhausted, he's sorry he came. That first look tells him your nerves are shot, his dinner is probably shot, and you'd both like to shoot the kids. It's a bad scene. Is it any wonder so many men come home late, if at all? . . ."

Similar in spirit, Trainwreck is about how Amy (Amy Schumer), a cynical magazine writer, after first coldshouldering him, tries to win over Aaron (Bill Hader), a sweet sports doctor, by trying to become his Total Woman. The winning strategy: don a cheerleader's outfit and do splits for him. Before this capitulation to his male needs, she is a feisty, take-the-bull-by-the-horns, politely racist, alcoholic, drug-taking, bisexual serial copulater working for a magazine that publishes articles on the effects of eating garlic on the taste of semen.

Well, that doesn't sound women's libby either. So where is the Schumer that Vox.com's Alex Abad-Santos noted has been "hailed as a groundbreaking feminist, a smart voice on women's issues, and someone who oozes subtle brilliance"?

Yes, where is the Schumer who at the Gloria Awards and Gala, hosted by the Ms. Foundation for Women, insisted: "I am a woman with thoughts and questions and shit to say. I say if I'm beautiful. I say if I'm strong. You will not determine my story -- I will. I will speak and share and fuck and love and I will never apologize to the frightened millions who resent that they never had it in them to do it. I stand here and I am amazing, for you. Not because of you. I am not who I sleep with. I am not my weight. I am not my mother. I am myself. And I am all of you, and I thank you."

She's not there in Trainwreck.

Yet this comedy is often so deliriously entertaining and so deftly constructed, you won't realize for a time that one of America's favorite, new, politically astute comics is having her values derailed. The opening scene, an instant classic, has Amy's dad Gordon (Colin Quinn, superb for the first time in his career) lecturing on the tediousness of monogamy and why he is divorcing their mom to a young Amy and her sister who's hugging her plaything: "What if I told you that is the only doll you're going to play with for the rest of your life?"

Jump ahead a decade or so and it is clearly observable that Amy has taken Pop's advice too much to heart. She can't commit and refuses to. She's an uncontrollable serial schtuper who goes to bed even with dudes residing in Staten Island. This causes her lovesick, possibly gay, muscleman/steady lover, Steven (a not-to-be-forgotten John Cena), to be left heartbroken when he learns the woman he desires to marry suffers from satyr-on-the-brain.

At this point, the sports-phobic Amy's assigned to do an article on Dr. Aaron by her editor (Tilda Swinton in another award-worthy cameo). A romance slowly blossoms forth until Aaron admits he has trouble with Amy putting her job before him, that they have both been to bed with the same number of women (three), and that the number of men of who've performed cunnilingus on his love interest could fill Barclays Center.

Oh, no! A rejected Amy quickly realizes one is the loneliest number. But can she start liking sports, rah-rah like a Dallas cheerleader, and do a Carol Brady impression full time to win love ever after? Of course, she can.

Yes, beginning as a Lenny Bruce routine, Trainwreck ends up as a Harlequin Romance.

Fem-politics aside, Schumer is clearly now positioned to be a top-tier film star. When Amy goes for the laughs, she succeeds 90% of the time, and when she becomes wounded, you empathize. One only wishes her addictive radicalness on TV could have been transferred to the big screen without the need for any soft-pedaling.

Maybe Schumer, who also wrote the screenplay, should read a little Rebecca West: "I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."

Schumer should know by now that being a doormat isn't the only way to a garner a first-rate love, although it might aid you at the box office.

Female Trouble

Brandon Judell — Sat, 16 May 2015 12:13:20 +0000

Female Trouble Brandon Judell May 16, 2015 - 08:13

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comedy

Good news for Comingsoon.net's Joshua Starnes. He can recycle his critique of Pitch Perfect (2012) for its sequel: "Pitch Perfect isn't particularly bad. It isn't particularly anything. And that's what's most disappointing about it."

The low-costing original Pitch took in $113,042,075 worldwide on a production budget of $17 million, which deemed it the second highest grossing comedy/musical since 1984, losing the top spot only to School of Rock (2003). No wonder there is a follow-up.

The semi-sad result is that although Pitch 2 is mostly painless, with several fine musical numbers, especially Snoop Dogg's Christmas duet with Anna Kendrick's Beta, the dialogue voiced between the often agreeable a cappella chorals seldom rises above the lame. "I'd like to be the brisket in that man sandwich" is possibly passable. "The air we're breathing now is 90% fart" isn't. "Fart" also appears as a password to get into a party of sorts, but it must be accompanied by a fart sound. Blame screenwriter Kay Cannon, whose efforts for 30 Rock were on a whole other level. She also wrote for Saturday Night Live, but since half of the skits of almost every segment of that program misfire, one know not whether to praise or demean her efforts there.

The film begins with the award-winning group, the Barden Bellas, performing in Washington, D.C., for the President and the First Lady. Yes, Michelle and mate make actual cameos. Near the end of the all-girls' routine, which was going rather fine, the hefty Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) is lowered from the ceiling as she sings Miley Cyrus's "Wrecking Ball." Suddenly, Amy's tights rip. Oh, no! She's not wearing undies. Her privates exposed midair cause the Obamas to frown, then quickly go viral, and suddenly Amy's the proud possessor of the world's most famous vagina.

This debacle causes the whole group to lose their standing, not only on the a cappella circuit but also on campus. Clearly, the only way to regain their aura of success is by winning the World Championships being held in Copenhagen.

There is little drama along the way since you can already guess the ending unless you've never been to a film before. But what's baffling here for a film directed by a woman, Elizabeth Banks, and written by a woman (Cannon), is that each female character is reduced to a single stereotype. The Asian girl speaks very quietly. The black, semi-butch lesbian can hardly control her sexual urges. As for the Guatemalan lass, she sees her future as being deported after she graduates and then drowning when she tries to smuggle herself back on a boat. Told in a deadpan manner, this is supposed to be very funny. Tell that to the relatives of all the thousands of folks who have died recently in just such a manner. Additionally, Rebel Wilson's Fat Amy's humor stems completely from her being overweight and buffoonish. I doubt making the obese girl the class clown is really the way to breakdown body biases.

Worse, the two broadcasters portrayed by Banks (Gail) and John Michael Higgins (John) spout 1950's intolerant commentary nonstop during every a cappella contest. Their "jokes" are racist, misanthropic, plain cruel, but mostly wonkish. An example, after a mishap, John opines: "This is what happens when you send girls to college." Clearly, Cannon desires to show the ridiculousness of being an anti-feminist. However, her targets often seem dated, and her one-liners frequently are barely groaners.

On the plus side, several of the female characters are bright, all are talented, and their body parts aren't fetishized. Still, seldom does the singing, the choreography, or the plot even come close to a prime episode of Glee.

Yet if you are a young woman, possibly in the age bracket of 12 to 16, you might just have a grand old time with these festivities. There are laughs, catchy tunes, and Anna Kendrick. Avengers: Age of Ultron can't boast that.

Sex Tape or The World’s Longest iPad Commercial

Brandon Judell — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 17:46:09 +0000

Sex Tape or The World’s Longest iPad Commercial Brandon Judell July 16, 2014 - 13:46

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comedy

Jake Kasdan is to directing comedy what Friedrich Nietzsche is to baking apple strudel. Not much.

As with his Bad Teacher (2011), which also stars Cameron Diaz and Jason Segal, Kasdan takes a promising concept and lays waste to it. The highly workable concept is a simple one: a sexually active couple, Jay (Segal) and Annie (Diaz), copulate like bunnies on ecstasy until they wed. Two precocious children later, the O in orgasms has moved on to the O on Cheerios boxes. He now is a music producer, I believe, and she blogs a column entitled "Who's Yo Mommy?" Yes, copulation is no longer a spontaneous act for this duo. Instead, it has to be planned for ahead of time.

So one night, when the kids are at that grandmother's, the pair try to get it on as they once used to, but to no avail, until Annie suggests Jay use his iPad to record them having sex. Deciding to enact every sexual position illustrated in Dr. Alex Comfort's 1970s bestseller The Joy of Sex, with the aid of tequila, they make a three-hour sex tape, which Jay accidentally sends out to all of the people he has given free iPads to, including the mailman, his mother-in-law, and the neighbors. Even Annie's future boss Hank (Rob Lowe) has one. Will they all see the tape? Will it go viral? Will Annie not get hired?

Think of the funny possibilities, then think of all the funny possibilities that could be missed. In fact, at the screening I attended, much of the film was greeted with a stone silence except by one sole woman from a site called thegirlattheparty.com, who was having a party unto herself. Who knows? This cordial dame might have had a yukfest at Schindler's List.

Clearly, there is no comic rhythm here. Almost every comic setup falters. The verbal slapstick sputters. Each scene is overwritten and goes on for much too long, giving Hamlet a run for total wordage. And there is no logic to any of the goings-on. The couple is supposedly cash poor, yet Jay gives away free iPods to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. As for Diaz's body, it clearly doesn't belong to someone who has had two children and no time for the gym. Then there are the subplots with Jack Black as a porno king and a chubby blackmailing child of a neighbor that just fall flat due to overextending the bit in the former and miscasting in the latter.

On the plus side, Diaz and Segal are total likable leads, who are convincingly wed. Now if they can only get a divorce from Kasdan and his co-writers Kate Angelo and Nicholas Stoller, all would be bliss.