Year: 2016

Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)

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fourstar

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One year after the release of Jurassic Park, a baby-faced Paul Walker & a teenage Denise Richards starred in a sci-fi horror rom-com about a remote-controlled animatronic Tyrannosaurus Rex. Tammy and the T-Rex is a work of inane beauty, a straight-to-VHS gem for schlock junkies & 90s culture fetishists to drool over. It’s technically, objectively, and even sometimes morally a horrendous film with no redeeming value as a work of art. On the other hand, it’s far more fun than it has any right to be, especially when its Looney Tunes logic takes over & the film accepts itself as the dumb, rudderless trash that it is.

Denise Richards plays a teenager cheerleader in the middle of a violent (especially for high school) love triangle. At one end, you have the brutish punk ex-boyfriend (complete with leather jacket & convertible) who refuses to let go of a dead relationship. At the other end stands a naive virgin of a goofball jock (played by future Fast & Furious star Paul Walker) who’s willing to risk life & limb to get under Richards’ cheerleader uniform. The brawls between the suitors are quite vicious. They kick each other in the head, orchestrate drive-by baseball bat beatings, take vice grips on each other’s genitals (“What we have here is an old-fashioned testicular stand-off”), and just generally aim to maim & kill. This escalates to Walker’s empty-headed jock being thrown into a lion & jaguar exhibit at the city zoo, a trauma that leaves him comatose, then “dead”, and then, once interfered with by an over-acted Dr. Frankenstein mad scientist archetype . . . transplanted into the “mind” of an animatronic T-Rex.

Of course, Tammy and the T-Rex really kicks into high gear once the dinosaur hijinks ensue. Continuing the surprise viciousness of the first act’s boyfights, the animatronic dino actually murders people. He crushes heads, flattens bodies out into bloody Bugs Bunny pancakes, tears teens open with his gigantic talons, etc. It’s treated as a lighthearted rampage, but it’s pretty brutal. The killings are fun & all, but what really makes Tammy and the T-Rex special are the dino jock’s more human activities. Watching his little dino arms lovingly stroke the cheek of his lifeless human body & operate a payphone is genuinely belly-laugh hilarious, as is the scene where he attends his own funeral, crying gigantic dino tears & the one where he proves who he truly is to his cheerleader girlfriend by playing charades & eating flowers. The best part is that the cheerleader decides to stick with her dino beau, riding him like a horse & helping him pick out potential new bodies in a morbid bit of window shopping at the morgue. Even when the dino jock is (spoiler alert) cruelly gunned down by the police, his cheerleader sweetheart keeps their love alive by storing his brain in a jar & feeding him strip teases & whiskey as sustenance.

Tammy and the T-Rex is a goofy mess, but it’s an enjoyable mess. Directed by Stewart Raffill, the buffoon behind Mac & Me and The Ice Pirates, the film has a decent schlock pedigree despite having essentially no traction as a cult classic. It can waver a bit in the details, especially in the depiction of the cheerleader’s gay bestie, who alternates from delightfully sassy to homophobic parody from scene to scene. For the most part, though, it’s a delightfully eccentric slice of forgotten schlock. If nothing else, Denise Richards’ wardrobe is 90s fashion-blogging Tumblr ready & the idea of a “party animal” teen dinosaur is goofy enough to carry the film on its own. There are surely some cult followings that have been built on less.

-Brandon Ledet

Boomer’s Top Films of 2015

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After much delay, here is my list of my ten favorite films of 2015. As is typical for me, it is longer than necessary and overly self­-concerned. Only two are wholly original, while six rely heavily on nostalgia and two arguably do. Before we get to it, first, the films that would probably be on this list had I seen them as planned, but I didn’t: Listen to Me, Marlon; Mommy; What We Are in the Dark; Mad Max: Fury Road; Felt; Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films. Other films that I enjoyed this year but that didn’t make it onto this list were Trainwreck, Ant-­Man, and, obviously, Star Wars: The Force Awakens (which should be on this list, but I saw it too late to count it here).

10. Jupiter Ascending – I know that everyone on earth hated this movie, except for a tiny band of rebels that has taken up hiding in small corners of the internet, making .gifs under an embargo from the rest of the web. Is the plot silly? Yes. Is Mila Kunis the wrong actress for this role? Oh my, yes. But is it the worst movie of the year? Not by a long shot. Jupiter Ascending, by simply existing, posits that there is still an audience in the world that is interested in brand new intellectual property, that there is still room in the world for movies that don’t require brand name recognition to turn a profit. As it turns out, the Wachowski Siblings seem to have been incorrect in their assumption sabout how much leeway audiences are willing to give them, or it may be that the world simply isn’t ready for a movie that states bees are capable of recognizing royalty and that life on earth was seeded for the sole purpose of eventually harvesting all organic existence to create eternal life goo. Regardless, I’ve seen virtually nothing but negative criticism about this movie and its plot holes (which I’m not here to apologize for or deny the existence of), but how much can you really hate a movie that features Channing Tatum flying around on hover skates and an extended Terry Gilliam homage sequence? I can’t bring myself to hate it at all, which is more than I could say for other films this year (*cough* Jurassic World *cough*).

9. Kingsman: The Secret Service – I first saw an “extended preview” for this movie during an airing of American Horror Story’s fourth season, and I wasn’t impressed or intrigued in the slightest. I think the problem was that the preview in question chose to focus on the action-­oriented nature of the film, neglecting to highlight that this film wasn’t simply an action movie clone but a love letter to Roger Moore’s time as James Bond (meaning that this is the first, but far from last, film on this list that traded on nostalgia for my attention). From the disfigured henchman whose physique is enhanced with deadly weapons, to the world-­takeover plans of the eccentric villain, to the huge Blofeld-­esque base hidden deep within a mountain, this movie was a delightful revisitation of spy films of yesteryear. By deconstructing the idea of the gentleman assassin by having protagonist Eggs face classist discrimination within the ranks of the secret organization by which he has been recruited and gleefully combining the camp of Moore’s Bond with the brutality of a Bourne film, Kingsman stood out as an early contender for best action movie of the year, even if it did get dumped into theatres at a bad time of year.

8. I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story – This movie made me weep openly at several points throughout the film. Maybe it’s because I have a huge soft spot in my heart for all things related to the Jim Henson workshop and a particular fondness both for Sesame Street in general and Big Bird in particular (several children in this movie are seen carrying the same plush replication of the character as the one I had as a child, purchased for me by my mother when we went to see Sesame Street on Ice, one of my earliest memories). More likely, however, it’s because this is a deeply sentimental documentary, one that is lovingly crafted in a way that I would be more critical of if the subject material was more contentious. But what’s controversial about Big Bird? Nothing that I can think of. Within the structure of the contemporary documentary, there is a pattern: exposition about the subject, an exploration of the subject in its heyday, the appearance of some kind of problem that affected the subject, and projections about the potential future of the subject. Normally, that third part revolves around something controversial or contentious: a sudden death on the set of a film project, the exposure of something criminal or unethical about an individual, etc. Here, however, the dark turning point is the sudden but natural death of Jim Henson, which affected Spinney but did not destroy or devalue him. Everyone interviewed in this doc has nothing but kind things to say about Spinney and his wife, and it’s nice to see such an overwhelmingly positive doc that does not shy away from the darker elements of his life, like his first marriage and the paternal abuse he endured as a child. In the wake of the controversy surrounding the accusations made against Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash in recent years (accusations that were thrown out in court, it should be noted), it touches the heart to know that some heroes don’t have to fall in the public eye; some childhood icons can still be idolized.

7. Goodnight Mommy (Ich seh Ich seh) – In my review of this film, I expressed criticism of the directors’ choices, especially as they pertain to the foreshadowing of film’s eleventh hour revelations. However, I also noted that this was a gorgeous movie with style to spare. The tension between the twins and the woman who may be their mother or a bandaged impostor builds in an exponential but organic way. Goodnight Mommy has been derided by its detractors as “torture porn,” referring to the way that the twins ultimately turn the tables on the woman whose increasingly cruel and incomprehensible changes in behavior make them question her identity, but those moments of horror are actually quite well shot and understated in their simplicity. Don’t be fooled by reviews that refer to this as a terrible movie, or an exploitative one; it’s quite good, it just could have worked as a  master class in how to direct a contemporary thriller had the directors had a little more self control with regards to the foreshadowing and kept it as subtle as the horror that permeates much of the rest of the film.

6. Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau – I expressed most of my thoughts about this documentary in my review of it, so I recommend reading that for a clearer picture of why I enjoyed it so much. Still, I’ll reiterate that the film, which explores all the ways that fate conspired to hand young indie director Richard Stanley the opportunity to create his lifelong pet project and then cruelly rip his dream from his hands through no real fault of his own, is definitely worth a watch, for artists and non-­artists alike. Stanley was standing on the cusp of a potentially great career, but hurricanes, stars’ personal tragedies, big egos, and Hollywood backroom dealing so thoroughly broke his spirit that he eventually spent months going native in Australia in order to escape from the artistic and personal trauma of it all, only for the production to find him again. A recounting of one of the most troubled productions in film history, this was definitely one of the best films of the year.

5. It Follows – “Aesthetic” has become a Tumblr buzzword of late, memetically taking on a life of its own to the point where simply posting the word under a photo of virtually anything is a joke in and of itself. I’m not some old bastard living up on a hill and complaining about this, but it has dulled the word’s meaning to the point that we are approaching a need for a new word to represent that which the word used to mean­­ in much the same way “epic” can be applied to anything from a nation-­building generation-­spanning narrative to Taco Bell meat wrapped in a giant Dorito now. While the word still means something, let’s talk about It Follows, 2015’s premiere indie horror movie that far succeeded expectations. Starring Maika Monroe (who was presumably created in a laboratory by scientists who couldn’t choose between replicating Brie Larson or Georgina Haig), David Robert Mitchell’s sophomore film is planted squarely in the aesthetics of 1988 in a way that elicits a warmness in me and takes me by surprise. I don’t necessarily think that It Follows is the best horror film in recent memory, although it is arguably the best of 2015 despite being more creepy than frightening; I simply find the tension of it to be less fascinating than its visual choices. It calls to mind other 80s­-appropriating vehicles that rely on nostalgia, but succeeds and captures more clearly that era than most despite being set in the present (or very near future): the kids watch nothing but old cartoons and B&W B­-movies on a television set with knobs (sitting atop an older console TV), they play Old Maid with cards from the 1970s, modern cars are seen only in the deep background, and, most tellingly, pornography exists only as magazines that look like they fell through a portal in time from 1978 (neighborhood boys spy on a teen girl in a bathing suit, as if any child with the internet could be so “innocent”). It’s like a product that falls just shy of being tailor­-made for me, right down to posters that would look great on the cover of a VHS box.

4. Cop Car – Saying that this film plays on nostalgia is a bit of a cheat, as it doesn’t make any direct comparisons to films of the past in the way that, say, Kingsman or It Follows does. However, in my review of the film, I mentioned that it seems directly inspired by the dark perspectives of the Coen Brothers, especially Fargo. Cop Car plays out most like that film in terms of its mostly cynical plot focusing on innocence lost because of poorly timed discoveries and seemingly harmless curiosity. There’s also a real attention to emotional honesty and investment that lend the film a verisimilitude that serves to heighten the emotional investment it solicits. I said more in my review of the film, so check that out for more.

3. Turbo Kid – Perhaps more than any other film on this list (with the possible exception of the following entry), Turbo Kid was a smorgasbord of eighties ideas smashed together into one glorious and beautiful assault on the senses. Moreover, each of those ideas is realized in bloody practical effect magic. The plot relies on a huge  narrative convenience, but it’s so much fun that it’s worth going along with.

2. The Final Girls – The nostalgia bait is particularly strong for me with this film, as it trades not only on my fondness for the slasher genre but also on my fondness  for my old hometown: Baton Rouge, here standing in for L.A. (I think). The Frost­Top shows up in this film, as does the Varsity Theatre, a building that I walked past every day for nearly a decade and which plays an important role as the location where the main “real world” characters get Last Action Hero’d into the film­-within-­the-­film Camp Bloodbath. There’s no lead-up to the moment where the crossover happens, and the fact that the film expects us to forget about the fact that Our Heroes™ escaped into the film while fleeing a horrible fire that likely killed dozens of others (as well as the presence of some truly terrible CGI) does some damage to the film’s credibility. Overall, however, as a send­up of Friday the 13th (et al) that focuses almost entirely on the relationships between female friends as well as a young woman and the woman who is not quite her mother, The Final Girls is well deserving of attention.

1. Queen of Earth – This list isn’t meant to be exhaustive and ultimately isn’t intended to be in ascending order of enjoyment or objective value, except in the case of this film, which I found to be, within the limited number of new films that I saw this year, the best of the bunch. I detailed all the things I loved in my review, but I’ll briefly recapitulate here: two lifelong friends visit terrible manipulation and emotional violence upon each other in a tense story that spans two separate summer getaways, where past secrets, petty jealousies, and personal vendettas come to light while one of the woman slowly  becomes more deranged. This was my favorite movie of the year, and its 1970s aesthetic makes it work all the better. Check it out!

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Joy (2015)

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fourstar

Has the David O. Russell hype train already crashed & burned? It wasn’t until 2012’s commercially-palatable mental health rom-com/drama Silver Linings Playbook that the director started to get his dues as a weirdo auteur, despite putting out quality work as far back as 1994’s uncomfortable black comedy Spanking the Monkey. Two Jennifer Lawrence collaborations later & critical consensus already feels like it’s turning on him, aiming to brush him off as a hack. It’s a total shame too. I understand, to a point, the complaints that Russell’s American Hustle resembled Scorsese’s Goodfellas a little too closely, but if you’re going to pay homage to something, why not make it one of the greatest films ever made? The complaints about his more-recent film, Joy, are a little more confounding to me. In some ways Russell is merely keeping the Goodfellas vibes rolling into the next picture & continuing his somewhat easy collaborations with Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Robert DeNiro in a film that might be a little too Hallmarkish for the hard-to-please, but if that’s all you see going on in Joy, you’re missing out on the much stranger big picture. It feels like Russell is really working out some half-formed new ideas here & watching him reach for that new, unexplored territory is fascinating stuff, making for the best film I think he’s made in years.

Expectation might be to blame for what turned a lot of audiences off from Joy. Based on the advertising, I know a lot of folks expected an organized crime flick about a mob wife, not the deranged biopic about the woman who invented the Miracle Mop that was delivered. Even more so, I believe that audiences expected a lighthearted drama from the guy who made Silver Linings Playbook. Instead, Joy finds Russell exploring the same weirdo impulses that lead him to making I ♥ Huckabees, an absurdist comedy that might be the very definition of “not for everyone”. Personally, I love Huckabees. It’s my favorite thing thing Russell’s ever done. Joy is certainly not as eccentric or as deliberately off-putting as Huckabees can be, but it does establish a delirious rhythm & nearly all-white visual palette that hits on the same anything-can-happen tone Huckabees delivered. By the time Joy delves into immersive soap opera & QVC imagery, the film has already established a dream-like sense of self-logic that makes the whole thing feel natural, despite television’s sterilized otherworldliness. Also like Huckabees, Joy plays its humor completely straight, with only the slightest hint of quirk prompting you to treat it like a comedy. The soap opera camp & Isabella Rossellini’s over-the-top performance in Joy were some of the funniest moments I had witnessed in the theater in all of 2015, but for some reason the audience I was with met them with more exasperated “That’s just ridiculous” comments instead of genuine laughter.

I, for one, welcome David O. Russell’s return to not-for-everyone cinema. The problem is that Joy might not have gone far enough in its Huckabees-esque absurdity. There is an admitted Hallmark/Lifetime-esque quality to the film that compels it to hammer every point home, to tie a bow on every resolved conflict. The dialogue indulges in some wholesome cheese in lines like “In America, the ordinary meets the extraordinary”, [from a young Joy playing happily-ever-after-type games] “I don’t need a prince”, and [from an adult Joy to her young daughter] “Don’t take any guff from anybody.” Worse yet is a completely unnecessary narrator who constantly reminds us that Joy is a “matriarch” or that she & her ex-husband are “the best married couple in America.” That aspect of Joy seems to be at war with the film’s strangest impulses, such as introducing a soap opera character who “came back as a ghost with even greater power”, including an extended cameo in which Melissa Rivers (all-too convincingly) portrays her recently-departed mother, and saddling its protagonist with a family so unbearably awful that you could easily forgive her for burning the house down with them all locked inside.

I would like to say with confidence that this contrast between the absurd & the maudlin was entirely intentional, that Russell was merely trying to reflect the mundane trashiness of his subject’s QVC/Miracle Mop subject. The truth is, though, that I have no idea. Joy is an odd compromise of things I loved & things I could’ve done without. The dream-like quality of the rhythm is fascinating, but the narration knocks its ambition down a peg. It’s Russell’s most experimental film in a decade, but it borrows heavily from not only Scorsese, but also from Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (in one particular scene, I could swear that Elliott Smith’s “Needle in the Hay” would play at any second). Isabella Rossellini’s monologue about “The 4 Questions of Financial Worthiness” was one of 2015’s funniest moments to me, but the humor is played so dryly it doesn’t seem to register with half its audience. If nothing else, what’s clear when you consider all of these self-contradicting qualities as a whole is that David O. Russell has made something oddly idiosyncratic here that can be a joy to watch if you can get on its dual arty & maudlin wavelengths. That’s good enough for me.

-Brandon Ledet

Listen to Me Marlon (2015)

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fourstar

Documentaries aren’t a medium that necessarily require constant innovation to remain relevant, but it’s still exciting when they reach for unexplored methods of information delivery. 2013 saw the unskeptical oral history of The Shining‘s conspiracy theorists in Room 237. 2014 allowed the perpetrators of a horrific genocide to tell their own story through a cinematic lens in The Act of Killing. It’s arguable that 2015’s biggest contribution to the documentary as a medium might have been Listen to Me Marlon. As a biography-in-motion type of doc, its approach to storytelling is fascinating on both a visual & an aural plane. With a wealth of lengthy rants culled from hundreds of hours of home audio recordings from infamous actor Marlon Brando’s recollections & attempts at self-hypnosis, Listen to Me Marlon matches the disconnected nature of its subject’s self-interviews with an equally blurry montage of his image both alive & undead. Yes, Brando appears posthumously in the film as a digitized ghost à la Robyn Wright in the criminally under-appreciated The Congress. It’s an eerie effect, but an entirely appropriate one give the oddness of its subject.

Marlon Brando was inarguably a fascinating man. He may even have been, for a time, America’s greatest actor. A straight-forward documentary about him would have easily been worthwhile. Instead of adopting a traditional approach, though, Listen to Me Marlon lulls its audience into a hypnotic state through the actor’s infamous mumble. As Marlon reminisces on the production of The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris, On The Waterfront, The Wild One, etc., you get the distinct feeling that you’re listening to & watching a ghost. In his life, Brando had already transformed from an impossibly beautiful young specimen of a man into an angry beast of an old crank. Listen to Me Marlon stages another transformation for the actor into a third, ethereal, intangible form. It’s a compelling effect, although a thoroughly subdued one.

People looking for a recap of a storied existence shouldn’t be too disappointed by what’s delivered here. Brando was a bit of a womanizer (helpfully explaining that “A lot of your decisions are made by your penis & not your brain”) and the film makes a big to-do about the parade of beauties that passed through his arms. He also discusses the very nature of his craft, recounting how he became an actor by accident, how cinema is different from stage acting because “your face becomes the stage” in close-ups, how his drama instructor Stella Adler essentially invented method acting & modern cinema and, of course, his ever-growing hatred for the parasitic nature of celebrity culture & tabloidism. Speaking of tabloids, Brando’s personal life & familial affairs also have a juicy quality to them (in the fact that they’re horrifically tragic & nobody’s business, really), as did his strong political affiliations – which included unlikely partnerships with The Black Panthers & radical Native American Civil Rights organizations.

Like I said, though, Listen to Me Marlon is anything but straight-forward, so anyone looking for that kind of recap is a lot more likely to be satisfied by a read-through of Brando’s Wikipedia page. For all of his discussion of craft in the film, his self-reflection still tends to get philosophical & abstract. He explains that acting is “lying for a living” & ponders why people would spend hard earned cash to sit in the dark & stare at a screen. His explanations delve into the idea that people want to be alone with their fantasies & their struggle with The Nightmare of the Want of Things. Brando also has a lot of abstract, frustrated things to say about the value (or lack thereof) in cinema & the exploitative nature of celebrity culture. The film has a great wealth of interview footage, photographs, and home audio to back up his abstract ponderings, but the ponderings themselves are less of a straight line & more of a swirly mess. I’ve never seen a documentary adapt dream logic or the shape of memories as closely as Listen to Me Marlon does & that aspect of its narrative is almost just as interesting as the story of Brando’s life itself, which is really saying something.

-Brandon Ledet

Erin’s Top Films Reviewed in 2015

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1. Crimson Peak (2015) – Guillermo del Toro writes a love letter to the Gothic Horror genre.  The classic tropes of isolation, bloody histories, unnatural relationships, menacing architecture, Victorians, obvious symbolism, endangered virgins, and things that gibber and chitter in the night are explored in a visually luscious theatrical feast.  Del Toro’s use of visual metaphor is appropriately heavy, and the acting is beautifully overwrought to match.

2. Road House (1989) – A classic story of the Bad Boy with a Heart of Gold and a Dark Past, Road House lets every one revel in the simple pleasure of barroom brawls and Patrick Swayze’s oiled up body. Watch it.  Enjoy it.  It’s ridiculous and satisfying.

3. The Man Who Laughs (1928) – The only silent movie that I reviewed this year.  It’s a fun look at the pre-Hayes Code Silver Screen.  It’s a melodrama based on a Victor Hugo novel, and it is played to the hilt.  Enjoyable and accessible if you are interested in trying out silent films.

4. Shanghai Noon (2000) – Thoroughly enjoyable ramble through Wild West tropes.  Jackie Chan makes an interesting and unlikely hero for a Western, and the good-looking cowboy played by Owen Wilson only manages to be a sidekick.  Fun and funny, with trademark Jackie Chan physicality and stunts.

5. Innocent Blood (1992) – A French Vampire in Pittsburgh instead of an American Werewolf in London.  A fey vampire accidentally turns a mob boss, and spends the rest of the movie chasing them with Joe, an ousted undercover cop.  The best part of this movie are the vampire mobsters and their scenery chewing, bombastic scenes.  Not John Landis’ strongest entry, but a fair attempt at the vampire genre.

6. Grandma’s Boy (2006) –  Lowbrow stoner humor.  It is what it is, but it’s pretty solid for an Adam Sandler movie.  Funny in a juvenile way, but manages to portray actual character development for Alex, the schlubby programmer protagonist.  The best performances are from the titular Grandma and her elderly roommates.

7. Crime of Passion (1957) – Barbara Stanwyck is Kathy, an ambitious Lady Reporter cum Stifled Housewife cum Conniving Murderess.   The 1950s were not kind to women with a mind for more than card parties.  Kathy’s situation is first sympathetic, but she walks down a dark road of Femme Fatale turns.

8.  The Little Mermaid (1989) – Childhood favorite.  The Little Mermaid makes an interesting watch as an adult – King Triton’s fairly reasonable attempts at parenting are definitely not appreciated by the 16 (!) year old Ariel, who should really have been grounded forever.  The movie, however, is gorgeous, the soundtrack is perfect, and it’s definitely a great watch.

-Erin Kinchen

Entertainment (2015)

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threehalfstar

Neil Hamburger’s comedy isn’t for everyone. Actually, that’s putting it too lightly. Neil Hamburger’s comedy is atrocious, just godawful, completely useless. Anti-comedy is a difficult trick to pull off. When it works, it’s a brilliant form of audience antagonism à la Andy Kaufman & his ilk (I defy anyone to watch Hamburger’s tirade against the Red Hot Chili Peppers without laughing at least once) but when it fails that antagonism feels like an empty exercise. Who could find a capable comedian intentionally telling shitty, unfunny jokes worthwhile if that’s the only thing they ever do? How is that entertainment? Neil Hamburger (aka Gregg Turkington) asks that question of himself in the pitch black comedy-drama Entertainment.

Entertainment follows a fictionalized version of Hamburger (billed here simply as “The Comedian”) on a stand-up comedy tour through the desolate American West. His opening act is an old-timey clown/mime (played by the immensely talented youngster Tye Sheridan). His venues are a depressing parade of prison cafeterias, hotel conference rooms, and dive bar stages. Bombing is essential to his act, which is true of the real-life Hamburger as well, but the movie takes it to a whole new low. Actual jokes from Hamburger’s routine are repeated verbatim in Entertainment, but any semblance of humor that can be found from in his work has been removed wholesale. All that is left is the antagonism. As “The Comedian” cracks monstrous jokes about rape, makes fart noises, and repeatedly pleads “Why? Why? Why?” in a piercing, nasal whine it makes all too much sense why no one in the audience is laughing. When he becomes savagely combative with them for not rewarding his efforts, you have absolutely no sympathy.

Just as director Rick Alverson disassembled Tim Heidecker’s brand of hipster anti-humor in The Comedy to make it into something unforgivably ugly & self-absorbed, he more or less repeats the trick for Neil Hamburger’s shtick here. Entertainment is about depression, addiction, and the uselessness of pursuing art for the sake of pursuing art, but it paints such an ugly portrait of the artist in question that there’s no sympathy to go around for his existential crisis (and intentionally so). You’re prompted to think “You should be depressed. Maybe you should quit comedy. Maybe life itself isn’t worth the effort for you.” There’s an excess of eerie imagery & spacial pacing in Entertainment that reaches for a Lynchian aesthetic I’m not sure that Alverson fully commands, so overall The Comedy endures as a much more confident, successful example of the anti-comedy-is-useless-cruelty genre the director is carving out for himself. Still, Entertainment stands as a brave act of self-reflection for Hamburger/Turkington & a pitch black drama/dark comedy for the art house crowd at large.

-Brandon Ledet

 

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

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threehalfstar

One of the best, most unexpected developments in recent media has been the resurgence of Kurt Russell. His work in 1980s John Carpenter classics Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from New York, and The Thing helped establish Russell as a genre flick icon, a charming-but-gruff personality with a history of cult classic works backing up his instant likability. A starring role in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof threatened a comeback for Russell back in 2007, but it doesn’t feel like that potential has really been put into motion until this past year. After an oddly humorous supporting role in Furious 7, Russell has returned to the Western cinema work he began in Tombstone, in both the recent Tarantino film The Hateful Eight and in Western-horror genre mashup Bone Tomahawk, making 2015 the first time he’s ever had three feature film credits in a single year. And with a great part coming up in the next Guardians of the Galaxy entry, it feels like he’s just getting started.

In Bone Tomahawk, Russell plays a mustachioed, old-timey sheriff of a small, Old West town humorously named Bright Hope. When a couple of Bright Hope’s own are abducted by a rogue tribe of “inbred” Native American “troglodytes”, Russell’s hardened sheriff embarks on a rescue mission with his elderly deputy, a hothead husband bent on retrieving his missing wife, and a wildcard cad. As the cad exposes himself as a self-aggrandizing blowhard, the husband increasingly becomes crippled & enraged, and the deputy continues his descent into the mutterings of a doddering old fool, the sheriff remains as the sole member of the rescue party seemingly well-equipped for the journey. No one can be truly prepared for what lurks at the end of this particular rainbow, though: a ruthlessly sadistic tribe of cave-dwelling cannibals.

I’ll be upfront as I can about this: I’m not typically a huge of fan of the Western as a genre. Its hyper-masculine, protect-the-wives-and-horses-from-the-savage-bandits mentality & spacial pacing aren’t my usual go-to idea of entertainment. Worse yet, Bone Tomahawk delves into some grotesque Eli Roth/Cannibal Holocaust bodily horror that I have a difficult time getting behind. The latter half of the movie in particular is jam-packed with field surgery, scalping, decapitation, internal burning, and all sorts of other unpleasant gore I would typically avoid. For all of its brutality & no-nonsense masculinity, however, Bone Tomahawk does know how to subvert these genre hallmarks enough to leave behind a generally pleasing picture. The man-vs.-nature vulnerability of a broken leg or a lost horse is still essential to the plot’s macho problem-solving, but it’s undercut by nuances in the dialogue, like when a woman comments on the doomed-to-fail rescue mission, “This is why frontier life is so difficult. Not because of the elements or the Indians, but because of the idiots. You’re idiots!” Speaking of “the Indians”, the film’s othering depictions of the antagonistic tribe of cannibalistic troglodytes’ demonic screams & skull armor is balanced by representation of other Native Americans who are much, much less barbarous & in exchanges like when a cowboy calls a native “a godless savage”, then immediately scratches his genitals with the barrel of a pistol.

Bone Tomahawk strikes a satisfying balance between living out a (possibly outdated) genre (or two)’s worst trappings & subverting them for previously unexplored freshness. Part of what makes it work as a whole is the deliciously over-written dialogue, like when David Arquette’s ruffian thief complains to the sheriff, “You’ve been squirting lemon juice in my eye since you walked in here,” but mostly it’s just nice to see Kurt Russell back in the saddle participating in weird, affecting genre work. I tend to go for a more cartoonish, morbidly humorous approach to gore than what’s presented here & I don’t see anything accomplished in this film that I didn’t enjoy far more in 1999’s criminally-overlooked Ravenous, but I also recognize that there are fans of the Western & of blunt, brutal horror that will get a kick out of what’s presented here. It’s a well-constructed, highly-disturbing genre pic with a solid lead hero, the exact kind of thing I’m glad to see Russell return to at this point in his career.

-Brandon Ledet

Brandon’s Top Camp Films of 2015

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Yesterday, I posted my list for the best films I saw in 2015, but with the exceptions of a couple outliers like Magic Mike XXL & Mad Max: Fury Road the whole thing reads as a little too . . . stuffy, dignified. To get a fuller picture of what the year looked like, here were the 15 films I most enjoyed on the trashier side of cinema, the ones we slapped with a Camp Stamp.

1. Goosebumps – The same way films like The Monster Squad, Hocus Pocus, Witches, The Worst Witch, and (on a personal note) Killer Klowns from Outer Space have introduced youngsters to the world of horror (and horror comedy) in the past, Goosebumps is an excellent gateway to lifelong spooky movie geekdom. It strives to stay true to its half-hokey, half-spooky, all-silly source material, resulting in a film that’s genuine dumb fun from beginning to end, but still packs a sharp enough set of teeth that it might just keep a tyke or two awake at night.

2. Unfriended – This laptop-framed live chat horror flick is so ludicrously invested in its gimmickry that it comes off as kind of a joke, but the commitment also leads to genuinely chilling moments that remind the audience a little too much of their own digital experiences. As a dumb horror flick filmed entirely from the first-person POV of a gossipy teen operating a laptop, it’s both way more fun & way more affecting than it has any right to be.

3. Spy – Paul Feig & Melissa McCarthy’s latest collaboration updates the mindless excess of the superspy spoof genre (seen before in films like Naked Gun, Austin Powers, and MacGruber) with a surprisingly sharp sense of humor lurking under its crass irreverence. If nothing else, Jason Statham’s monologue in which he brags about his past adventures might be the single funniest (and most relentlessly dumb) scene of the year.

4. Furious 7 – I watched all 7 Fast & Furious movies for the first time this year and can say with total confidence that this was easily the most over-the-top in its absurd disregard for physics, human nature, and good taste. What a fun, ridiculous spectacle of an action movie.

5. Turbo Kid – A cartoonish throwback to an ultraviolent kind of 1980s futurism that probably never even existed. It’s difficult to believe that Turbo Kid didn’t previously exist as a video game or a comic book, given the weird specificity of its world & characters. It’s a deliriously fun, surprisingly violent practical effects showcase probably best described as the cinematic equivalent of eating an entire bag of Pop Rocks at once.

6. Deathgasm – An authentic look into a metal head teen’s colorful imagination, Deathgasm is a gore-soaked, go-for-broke horror comedy about a high school metal band’s war against a zombie apocalypse. It’s delightfully gross & oddly sweet.

7. Krampus – Director Michel Dougherty’s first film, Trick ‘r Treat, was a comedic horror anthology devoutly faithful to the traditions of Halloween. His follow-up, Krampus,  thankfully kept the October vibes rolling into December traditions in a time where so many people do it the other way around, celebrating Christmas before Halloween even gets rolling. All hail Krampus,  a soul-stealing demon who acts as “St. Nicholas’ shadow”,  for bucking the trend.

8. The Final Girls – If you happen to be a fan of 80s “camp site slasher films” like Friday the 13th & Sleepaway Camp and you enjoy meta genre send-ups like Scream & The Last Action Hero, please check out The Final Girls as soon as you can. It not only participates in the trope-referencing meta play of Wes Craven’s Scream, but because of its outlandish movie-within-a-movie concept, it also adopts the dream logic of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. Although the film’s main goal is undoubtedly a goofy, highly-stylized comedy, it also reaches for eerie, otherworldly horror in its central conceit.

9. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation – Pretty much a repeat of what I had to say about Furious 7. I watched the entire Mission: Impossible series for the first time this year & the newest installment, Rogue Nation, easily stood out as the most over-the-top entry in the fairly silly action franchise yet.

10. Russell Madness – A family comedy “produced by” Air Bud about a Jack Russell Terrier who finds success as a mixed-species pro wrestler. Need I say more? The only flaw in its execution of what had to be the dumbest premise of the year is that they didn’t stick with what must have been the original title: Russell Mania.

11. American Ultra/Victor Frankenstein – I can’t defend essentially anything I’ve ever read Max Landis say on the internet, but I can say that he wrote two of the most mindlessly fun, delightfully excessive examples of trashy cinema that I saw all year.

12. Patch Town – A horror comedy Christmas musical about an evil Cabbage Patch dolls factory, Patch Town sounds like the kind of Sci-Fi Channel dreck that would settle for a couple odd moments & a celebrity cameo, then call it a day. Instead, it milks its concept for all it’s worth. Its high-concept, low budget weirdness is calculated, sure, but it’s also surprisingly thorough in pushing that concept as far as it could possibly go & even better yet, it’s genuinely funny.

13. Everly – A scantily clad prostitute played by Selma Hayek attempts to reunite with her family and escape a life of indentured servitude through an onslaught of gun violence. Cornered in a condo, Hayek’s Everly has to shoot her way through an army of Japanese gangsters, bumbling bodyguards, and fellow prostitutes to achieve freedom. If this sounds stupid & gratuitous, it’s because it most definitely is. Everly isn’t a film where any themes or ideas are explored in new or interesting ways and the violence is a mere exclamation point. It’s a film where violence is the entire point.

14. R100 – Late in the run time of this surreally campy BDSM comedy, the film addresses the audience directly by suggesting that, “People won’t understand this film until they’re 100 years old.” Even that timeline may be a little too optimistic. Directed by Hitoshi Matsumoto, the juvenile prankster who brought the world the cartoonish excess of Big Man Japan & Symbol, R100 initially pretends to be something it most definitely is not: understated. The first forty minutes of the film are a visually muted, noir-like erotic thriller with a dully comic sadness to its protagonists’ depression & persecution. It’s around the halfway mark where the film goes entirely off the rails genre-wise, dabbling in tones that range from spy movies to mockumentaries to old-school ZAZ spoofs. It’s doubtful that even 100 years on Earth will give you enough information to make sense out of that mess.

15. The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age SmackDown – What can I say? I’m a sucker for pro wrestling cinema. The dumber the better. In The Flintstones & WWE: Stone Age SmackDown the unholy marriage of the title not only connects both The Flintstones’ Honeymooners-style comedy and the WWE’s complete detachment from reality with their collective roots in working class escapism, it also revels in the most important element in all of wrestling & animation, the highest form of comedy: delicious, delicious puns.

-Brandon Ledet

Brandon’s Top Films of 2015

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1. The Duke of Burgundy – Possibly the least commercial movie about a lesbian couple in a BDSM relationship possible. Equal parts an intentionally-obfuscated art film & a tender drama about negotiating how to balance romantic & sexual needs in a healthy relationship, The Duke of Burgundy isn’t for everyone, but it is the most beautifully-shot film of the year and a surprisingly poignant portrait of a timeless romance. If you have the patience for its languid pacing & reliance on repetition, the rewards are rich & plentiful.

2. What We Do in the Shadows – In a year when a surprisingly limited number of American comedies hit the mark, this gem from New Zealand geniuses Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi was an easy pick for best comedy of the year, if not the decade. You’d think that a mockumentary about vampire roommates in modern times would be the last breath of a dying genre, but What We Do in the Shadows is readily-available proof that the stake hasn’t been driven into its heart quite yet. This is a hilarious film that only improves upon repeat viewings, with a wealth of quotes waiting to make their way into your daily vocabulary. Now leave me to do my dark bidding on the Internet.

3. Ex Machina – Just really solid, well-constructed sci-fi. I can’t think of a film from this year that got a bigger effect out of so few, subtle moving parts. A lot of what immediately stands out about Ex Machina is the incredible talent of its three lead actors, but the film also has an intense, well-curated visual language to it that can make your blood run ice cold with the most minimal of efforts.

4. Tangerine – The movie from 2015 I’d most like to watch/discuss with (the greatest human being walking the Earth) John Waters. Tangerine is a raucously fun, poorly behaved whirlwind of an adventure through Los Angeles’ cab rides & sex trade. For a movie shot entirely on iPhones it’s got a surprisingly intense cinematic eye & despite leaning hard towards over-the-top excess there’s a very touching story at its heart about the value of friendship & makeshift family.

5. Mad Max: Fury Road – Probably the most intensely weird & go-for-broke action film of the past decade. George Miller may be in his 70s, but this is the work of a youthful spirit grinding the gas peddle hard to the floor, hands off the steering wheel. In a time where CGI is casting an insufferable blandness across most action properties, Fury Road is a practical effects masterwork that feels like a breath of fresh air, despite the chokehold it takes on your senses.

6. Magic Mike XXL – The first Magic Mike film is a somber, reflective drama that just happens to be centered on a gaggle of male strippers. XXL, on the other hand, is an over-the-top road trip comedy where said strippers act like an over-aged boy band: horny, sassy, and high on drugs. One of the most unashamedly fun movie-going experiences of the year, not to mention the lagniappe of its intense cinematography.

7. The Diary of a Teenage Girl – An incredibly uncomfortable coming-of-age drama about a young girl in 1970s San Fransisco exploring her sexuality in wildly dangerous ways. Its comic book art visual palette works like a major asset instead of a gimmick & relative newcomer Bel Powley delivers what might be the best lead performance of the year.

8. Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens – Interstellar was the most hilariously over-complained about movie of 2014. The Force Awakens easily earned that distinction in 2015. It’s a genuinely fun, intricately detailed return to form for a franchise that hasn’t been nearly this satisfying since 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back. If you need insight into just how much the movie bends over backwards to please its audience, just take a look at the beyond-adorable BB-8. What a little cutie.

9. Straight Outta Compton – As far as its historical accuracy as an N.W.A. biopic goes, Straight Outta Compton might be shooting about 20%. All of its self-congratulating indulgence aside, it’s a 100% awesome (or “dope”, if you will) late-80s/early-90s pastiche with a killer soundtrack and some stunning visual work from regular Aronofsky-collaborator Matthew Libatique.

10. Felt – A hazy, disconnected portrait of a visual artist coping with a past, vaguely-defined (but likely sexual) trauma. Felt is an unforgivingly intense gaze into a super-specific form of art therapy, even before its meandering pace crashes in a grandly violent display at the film’s conclusion.

11. White God – As most revenge movies tend to go, the endless parade of abuse in this film’s early storylines are not nearly as fun or as easy to watch as it is when shit hits the fan. It just so happens that in this case the revenge is carried about by a massive herd of stray dogs that have a very good list of reasons to tear down an entire city. It’s an incredible, one-of-a-kind spectacle.

12. Appropriate Behavior – Writer/director/actress Desiree Akhavan brings an impressive amount of authenticity to a genre that’s been a little too popular to feel truly distinct lately: the drama-comedy about the 20-something New York City woman who just can’t seem to figure her shit out. This a dark, but hilariously raunchy work & for my money its far more satisfying than its most (financially) successful comparison point from the same year – Trainwreck.

13. Spring – Part of what makes Spring so fun is that it’s such a difficult film to pin down. Is it a tender romance drama or a modern version of a natural horror? What’s more important: its central doomed-to-be-seasonal romance or the horrific nature of its shape-shifting sci-fi beast? Let’s just split the difference & call it the most interesting answer to Linklater’s Before Sunrise/Before Sunset series to date.

14. It Follows – In a lot of ways it feels like John Carpenter’s entire aesthetic is making a (much deserved) cultural comeback. Weirdo action films like The Guest & Drive have at least incorporated his distinct soundtrack work into their highly-stylized worlds, but It Follows takes the homage a step further and constructs more or less what a modern John Carpenter horror would look and sound like. It isn’t as successful as Carpenter’s masterworks like Halloween or The Thing, but its haunting sexually-transmitted-curse premise & killer synth soundtrack make for some remarkably weird & memorable moments.

15. Driving While Black – Presented on the surface as a laid back stoner comedy, this film actually packs a surprisingly powerful (and unfortunately timely) political punch in its depiction of “the extra layer of bullshit on top of regular life” that black people have to face daily in modern America. Detailing the public harassment & personal violation of being constantly persecuted by the police on the receiving end of racial profiling, Driving While Black walks an impressive tightrope of feeling like an important movie, but never losing track of being consistently funny.

16. Creep/The Overnight – Writer/director Patrick Brice just had a pretty incredible year. His first two feature films, Creep & The Overnight, earned wide distribution withing months of one another and both stood as darkly funny, often hilarious reminders of how much of an impact a director can pull from a great script, a limited set, and just a handful of actors. Although one is a found footage horror (Creep) and the other is a twisted play on the traditional sex farce (The Overnight) they pair nicely in their lean towards minimalism & in their collective declaration of Brice as a talent to watch.

17. Queen of Earth – The two minute trailer for Queen of Earth might be the best short film of the year, but the movie itself is a lot more delicate & detached than the psychological horror that the ad promises. It’s difficult to pin down exactly what transpires in this film (I personally see it as a vicious, yet subtle tale of revenge through drawn out emotional torture), but the seething hatred mounting between its two leads is bound to bore a hole into your memory no matter where you land on its plot.

18. Predestination – Predestination is neither a wholly unique work nor an exercise in good taste. It is, however, an example of the virtue of sincere, traditional acting & storytelling and how those elements can elevate ludicrous material into something special. Although its major twists & reveals may occasionally be telegraphed, it’s fascinating to watch the film reach those conclusions in its own time and on its own terms. There’s a sci-fi tradition to its sincere, pulpy sense of tonal balance, but it’s a vintage tradition that’s unconcerned with the new territory that sci-fi cinema’s been exploring in recent years.

19. Goodnight Mommy – There’s a major twist at the core of Goodnight Mommy that most discerning folks will be able to catch onto within minutes of the film beginning, but that withheld reveal in no way cheapens the ugly brutality of its horror imagery or the delicate beauty of its art film surreality. Goodnight Mommy is not looking to outsmart you with its plot, but rather to tie you down & torture you with its relentless horror film intensity. As a bonus, it also functions like cinematic birth control the same way that great works like The Bad Seed, The Babadook, and We Need to Talk About Kevin have in the past. It’s a very specific genre that I’m always a sucker for.

20. Mistress America – Noah Baumbach’s latest pulls an incredible trick of not only exposing the harrowing emptiness behind a know-it-all, creative-spirit Millenial’s Everything Is Perfect & So Am I facade, but also making you feel sort of bad for her when the illusion crumbles. Like the film’s protagonist who looks up to this human anomaly, we want to believe that someone so free & so in tune with The Ways of the Universe could actually exist, but by the end of the film you’re left with the feeling that the very idea of someone living that impossible lie on a daily basis is not only far from admirable, it’s also deeply sad.

H.M. Girlhood – Despite what you might expect from a film about roving packs of French girl gangs, Girlhood is far from an on-the-nose melodrama with explicit messages about the powder keg of poverty & puberty. Instead, it’s a brutally melancholy slow burner about an especially shitty youth with dwindling options for escape. It’s far more open-ended & hazy than I was anticipating, opting more for a gradual unravelling than a grand statement. It’s that aversion to closure & moralizing that makes the film special when it easily could’ve gone through the motions of rote Lifetime Movie schmaltz. Besides, its mid-film, impromptu music video for Rihanna’s “Diamonds” easily ranks among the year’s most uplifting moments in film.

-Brandon Ledet

Brannigan (1975)

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When you bring up John Wayne, it’s inevitable that his name will conjure images of old-fashioned Westerns. He’s synonymous with the genre, an in-the-flesh embodiment of cowboy cinema. That’s why I was surprised when I sat down at a Christmas party with my grandfather to watch one of his favorite John Wayne pictures to find that it wasn’t a Western at all. It’s not even set in America, let alone the Old West. Brannigan is a fish-out-of-water action comedy about a hard-boiled Chicago detective brandishing pistols in a stuffy, crime-ridden 1970s London. Of course, John Wayne plays the titular police detective with the same worlds-away-from-Chicago cowboy swagger he’s most closely associated with, but the setting is still jarring. In some ways, though, it makes you appreciate Wayne’s screen presence even  more to watching him operate outside of his element.

Besides casting a Western cinema legend in a non-Western role, Brannigan hosts several other glaring self-contradictions. Tonally, its mix of severed-finger, bullethole-ridden, sexual assault-threatening violence pairs ridiculously with its sarcastic, seen-it-all-before humor. This contrast can be best observed in an over-the-top pub brawl when Brannigan punches a goon so hard that he slides across the entire length of a bartop in a surprise tangent into Looney Tunes physics. Genre-wise, the film can’t decide if it wants to be a suspenseful heist film or an outright comedy. It can’t even decide which storyline is its main concern: the plot that has Brannigan chasing after a notorious crime boss being held for ransom or the plot that has Brannigan being chased himself by an assassin prone to using bomb & shotgun booby traps like an especially vicious Kevin McCallister. Or are both of these stories merely a backdrop for a blood-soaked comedy about Old World stuffiness vs. New World cavalier?

My favorite aspect of Brannigan‘s self-contradicting nature is where it sits on exploitation cinema’s temporal landscape. Although it’s a major studio film, it feels like it’s caught somewhere between the welcome-to-the-real-world harshness of New Hollywood, the righteously funky world of blaxploitaion (except with a white man as the lead, of course), and the as-yet-created humorously violent world of 80s action cinema. John Wayne establishes himself here as an early action star. His super-sarcastic, know-it-all one-liners play like a precursor to characters that would later be played by folks like Arnold Schwarzenegger & Sly Stallone. Brannigan doesn’t just burst into a room; he bursts into a room & dryly intones “Knock, knock” while brandishing a pistol. Then there’s the fact that every criminal in the world apparently knows legendary supercop Jim Brannigan by name, even though he works for Chicago’s municipal police department. That detail would be later repeated in every Commando, Cobra, and Hard to Kill to follow. He’s even provided a cute, tiny, foreign sidekick, another staple of the 80s action genre, although this time she’s never threatened to become a love interest despite all of Brannigan’s incessant leering. She does, however, spontaneously reward him with a kiss on the cheek over a dinner for two. Why? She explains, “You’re just so damn solid.” Indeed.

John Wayne badassery aside, Brannigan is a well put together action flick. Its lush shots of drive-bys, gun holsters, and sexy workers showing leg – all the leg – are all surprisingly intricate enough for a film that didn’t have to try too hard to succeed. John Wayne is entertaining enough on his own to carry the film, but a lot of effort still goes into detailing the organized crime end of London’s underbelly. Pubs, saunas, brothels, and late night stakeouts provide a nicely detailed background for Wayne to perform against and the car chases & counterfeit money production play like a precursor to Friedkin’s masterful To Live & Die in L.A.. Even without Wayne, Brannigan would still be a decent, humorous action flick with a great villain & hero, and a satisfying (albeit slow-moving) plot. Wayne’s hard-drinking, gun-toting supercop who calls everyone within earshot “Partner” is 1000% more cowboy than he is Chicago detective, but his performance is still what makes the movie special instead of merely decent. I’m far from a Western fanatic, so this oddly humorous & wildly violent action pic ended up being my favorite performance I’ve ever seen from Wayne. It’s easy to see why my grandfather holds it in such high regard despite it being far outside headlining star’s wheelhouse & being generally regarded as trash.

-Brandon Ledet