brandon ledet

I, Frankenstein (2014)

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EPSON MFP image

onehalfstar

campstamp

Reading over Wikipedia’s plot synopsis of I, Frankenstien makes me feel like a cinematic amnesiac. All the talk of “Gargoyle Order” weapons wielded to “ascend” and “descend” demons & gargoyles sounds vaguely familiar, but the particulars of what Bill Nighy, Dr. Frankenstein’s book or the supermodel scientist were up to are fuzzy at best. Mostly I remember Aaron Eckhart testing out his gruff Batman voice as if his former role as Harvey Dent was a consolation prize. There was some fun to be had in the climactic good versus evil fight scene (especially in the detail of costuming the evil demons in business suits) but for the most part the whole affair felt grim & indistinct.

I, Frankenstein is definitive proof that this post-Dark Knight era of sad sack superhero movies is reaching its nadir. Reinventing the monster movie by fusing it with the superhero genre is an idea loaded with fun potential, so (to quote a popular, hideous dorm room poster & t-shirt) why so serious? After all of I, Frankenstein’s ridiculous trailers & nominations for Worst Film of 2014, it at least gave the impression that it could’ve been amusing. Outside of minor details like the business suit demons, I get the sense that I was promised more goofy antics than were delivered.

I haven’t seen a single entry in the Underworld series, which shares writers & producers with I, Frankenstein, but from what I understand they’re just as bleak. To an outsider, the most bewildering aspect of the vampires/werewolves “action horror” series is that there are four of the damn things. Despite the lackluster critical response and general sense of drudgery, Underworld found enough of an audience to justify 7 hours of celluloid. Building off that hubris, I, Frankenstein all but offers an “Until Next Time” promise after the credits in its conspicuous aspirations of launching a new franchise. The problem (besides its uninspiring box office performance)? It’s not the only self-serious “action horror” Frankenstein product in the works.

2014 also saw the release of Universal Studios’ first entry in the planned Shared Universe® for its classic monsters characters: Dracula Untold. For the most part the movie was Dracula Unremarkable, but there were some (underutilized) bright spots: the vampire deaths were surprisingly gruesome considering the PG-13 rating (a heap of melted flesh instead of I, Frankenstein’s more symbolic “descending”) and Charles “The Man” Dance made the most out of his limited role as the head vampire. Just as I, Frankenstein felt like little more than dull goth superhero franchise kindling, Dracula Untold was mostly a “this is just the beginning” letdown of a story. One of the other goth superheroes on the Universal docket, waiting to join Dracula’s ranks: Frankenstein’s monster.

Given the unlikely longevity of the Underworld series it’s possible that Lionsgate will ignore the Universal Studios famous monsters universe and we’ll live in a world with two dueling Gritty Reboot® Super Frankenstein franchises nobody asked for. Hopefully an I, Frankenstein, II would ditch the self-serious tone and work in more business-suit-demons humor, but I wouldn’t hold your undead, crime-fighting breath. Seriously, don’t hold it. It’s criminal for movies this ridiculous in premise to be so severe, but they’re unlikely to change their ways as long as they’re making money. Or in I, Frankenstein‘s case, at least breaking even.

I, Frankenstein is currently streaming on Netflix & Amazon Prime.

-Brandon Ledet

It’s A Disaster (2013)

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disaster

fourstar

Although its sense of humor is decidedly more uncomfortable than either, It’s A Disaster is the same vein of realistic, self-absorbed approaches to widespread disasters as comedies like Shaun of the Dead & Life After Beth. Instead of a zombie attack, this small group of friends is trying to survive couples’ brunch . . . and the fallout from a series of dirty bombs set off in downtown Los Angeles.

Chemical warfare is the mechanism that keeps the characters cooped up inside the house, unable to escape brunch, but their toxic personal relationships are the real threat. Important news broadcasts are disregarded in favor of confessions of betrayal. Planning for survival takes a backseat to pointless power plays, cruel insults, and sexual advances. This isn’t quite the sadistic, drunken argument gallows humor of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? & The Boys in the Band, but it’s not far off.

It’s the kind of movie that has its cake and eats it too. With mimosas to drink. The personal relationships are vicious, but also sweet. The letdown of an ending is so well handled that it’s a send-up of letdown endings. Everyone’s having the worst day of their life, but also a pretty great time. There’s a very delicate balance between jovial & soul-crushing that It’s A Disaster handles expertly. It obviously helps that the entire film is hilarious.

It’s partly the casual nature of the performances that keeps the mood light despite the grim premise. Julia Stiles & America Ferrera are particularly great here, but the one performance that really struck me is David Cross’. Cross usually goes big in his comedic roles and is rarely afforded time to slowly ramp up the crazy the way he is here. Usually he plays a ridiculous caricature suited for his sketch comedy roots, his entire personality established early & often. Even in last year’s Obvious Child, Cross played the one character in a grounded cast that felt unbelievable as a real person. In It’s A Disaster, Cross is introduced as an audience surrogate, a doorway into an established world of ludicrous, lethal friendships before the pressure of the situation gets to him and he joins their ranks. I’ve always enjoyed Cross’ work, but this is up there among his best. It’s a great performance in a great film about an awful, awful brunch.

It’s A Disaster is currently streaming on Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime.

-Brandon Ledet

“Unedited Footage of a Bear” & The Year of the Doppelgänger

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bear

After posting a too-long article trying to make sense out of last year’s surge of doppelgänger movies earlier this week, someone pointed out to me that I missed a major one: “Unedited Footage of a Bear”. “Unedited Footage” is a horror/comedy short from the same Adult Swim Infomercials program that produced the 2014-defining “Too Many Cooks”. (Did I get that song stuck in your head again? I am so sorry.) Where “Cooks” deconstructed an impressive range of television formats and worked them into a singular slasher film, “Unedited Footage” did the same with a much narrower genre: allergy medicine commercials. Using the fine print listed side effects of medication commercials & the intense artificiality of advertising in general to its disturbing advantage, “Unedited Footage” tells a tight, effective horror story in its fleeting ten minutes. A horror story that hinges on 2014’s biggest pet obsession: doppelgängers.

Although it plays on the popular doppelgänger obsession of last year’s features, “Unedited Footage of a Bear” isn’t a feature film itself. It isn’t even unedited footage of a bear. The entire doppelgänger/slasher storyline is framed as a tangent that distracts from the titular bear, but since it eats up all but 30sec of the runtime & the film never returns to the bear, the doppelgänger plot is the bulk of the film in every sense. Although it acts as the initial framing device, the bear is the tangent. The doppelgänger is the heart.

Despite the arrival of “Unedited Footage” at the December finish line & its depiction of a doppelgänger murder story, it’s hard for me to justify an addendum including it on that 2014 list. My intention with the “2014’s Doppelgänger Movies & Their Unlikely Doubles” article was to make sense of last year’s varied approaches to that genre by finding those film’s own doppelgängers in other seemingly unrelated movies. Besides the fact that I honestly forgot about “Unedited Footage” at the time, the problem with including it there is that I can’t think of its own double. I can’t think of another film that allows a single tangent to dominate the narrative in that way. (The only one that really comes to mind is that extended dream sequence towards the end of Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion where Lisa Kudrow’s Michele is sleeping in the passenger seat of a convertible, but believes she has gone into the reunion, expertly schmoozed her old classmates by convincing them that she invented the glue on the back of Post-it notes, fails to drag Mira Sorvino’s Romy away from a make-out session, gets hit by a limo, starts her own make-out session in that limo, loses her blouse, accepts an award in her bra, and grows old & wealthy still disconnected from her best friend before she finally wakes to discover it was all just a dream and she hasn’t even left the car. But that doesn’t even come close, really, because that dream only dominates a few minutes of the movie, which soldiers on after it concludes, the same way this article will soldier on after this tangent concludes. Also, I just saw Romy & Michele for the first time a couple nights ago so that’s totally why it’s fresh in my mind.)

2014 saw an unusual excess of new entries for the doppelgänger genre. The idiosyncratic “Unedited Footage of a Bear” deserves to be remembered among them, if not only because any film featuring an original score & brief cameo by Dan Deacon deserves to be remembered. It’s just unclear to me what the movie’s own doppelgänger in this world is, but I’m sure it’s out there, waiting to murder it. (Unless it actually is Romy & Michele, in which case it’ll most likely take it shopping or force-feed it junk food or make it watch Pretty Woman, like, 36 times, which is its own form of death.) Oh, it’s out there.

-Brandon Ledet

Jack Reacher (2012)

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jack reacher

three star

campstamp

Imagine a world without Scientology, a world without Katie Holmes, a world without Oprah’s couch. In this alternate universe Tom Cruise’s decade-old public meltdown never happened. Cruise is still top gun in all of our hearts. Every film he stars in is a major success. Beautiful women throw themselves at his feet. He merely needs to show up & wink at the camera to win us all over and collect his giant paycheck.

This isn’t a world we get to live in all the time, but we are allowed to visit. For instance, last year’s surprisingly entertaining Edge of Tomorrow saw Tom Cruise in full movie star mode, smooching ladies & killing space aliens in a violent version of Groundhog Day. Even Edge of Tomorrow is a little too eccentric to recall vintage Tom Cruise, though. If you’re looking for purely smug, top-of-the-world, Days of Thunder Cruise you have to go back to 2012’s Jack Reacher.

Jack Reacher is a straight-forward Tom Cruise vehicle. It’s not stylish. It’s not cool. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more than it is: a loud & dumb action movie. Think less The Guest and more Face/Off or Road House. Cruise, who of course plays the titular Jack Reacher, is so deliciously full of his smugly sexy self here. He drives maniacally, flirts with co-star Rosamund Pike like she owes him something, has the problem solving skills & inherent knowledge of an omnipotent god, and delivers smartass one-liners before every inevitable kill (those one-liners take a nastily sexist left turn in a particularly anachronistic bar fight scene). If you have any affection or nostalgia for Cruise before Oprah’s couch outed him as a total weirdo, Jack Reacher is a sight for sore eyes.

Bonus Points: All of this Tom Cruise talk is truly burying the lede. The real Jack Reacher story is that auteur director Werner Herzog plays the movie’s villain. Herzog’s role is minimized in the film the same way it’s minimized in this review. He doesn’t appear onscreen until nearly an hour in and delivers maybe one or two speeches, but the potency even a couple lines from Evil Herzog is something to be cherished. If you have no affection for vintage Cruise (or loud, dumb action movies in general) you owe it to yourself to at least watch Evil Werner Herzog perform here in the film’s best two minutes.

–Brandon Ledet

Jack Reacher is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

2014’s Doppelgänger Movies & Their Unlikely Doubles

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doppelganger

2014 saw the wide release of an unusual bounty of films about doppelgängers. Besides comic book superheroes it had to be the most common cinematic topic of the year. As early as Spring there was a heap of press citing similarities between Enemy & The Double, two doppelgänger movies based on doppelgänger novels both titled The Double (one by José Saramago & one by Fyodor Dostoyevsky). I joked that if they shared a distributor (they don’t) they should be released on home video as a combo pack. It turns out that besides one (admittedly major) detail in premise the two films actually have very little in common. As the year went on I found the true spiritual doppelgängers of Enemy & The Double in highly unlikely places, as well as a few more doppelgänger movies & their own unlikely partners.

Of course there are possible spoilers for all titles listed in bold below.

The Double (2014) & Joe Versus The Volcano (1990)
Although Richard Ayoade’s The Double didn’t deliver the similarities to Enemy that I expected, it wore other, stranger influences on its sleeve. It not only boasted visual cues picked up from David Lynch’s oeuvre, but also intentionally mirrored Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. The Double’s similarities with Brazil are so purposeful Ayoade’s film could be considered a long-form homage. What’s infinitely more surprising to me is the similarities it shares with the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan comedy Joe Versus The Volcano.

There’s a good deal of humor lurking under the surface of the Lynch & Gilliam influences Ayoade pulls from, but The Double is more of an unambiguous black comedy, its own dark humor resting in plain view. Its sinister amusement with depression & the grim life of an office drone positions it as more of a modern descendent of Joe in terms of genre. The Double’s Jesse Eisenberg’s work life is so surreally awful the only character in cinema I can compare it to is Tom Hanks’ Joe. The set design in both characters’ offices are achievements in over-the-top blandness. They both ache with yearning for coworkers who don’t know they exist. They even both serve clueless megalomaniac bosses portrayed by gifted character actors (Wallace Shawn & Dan Hedeya, respectively).

Admittedly, the resemblance fades after the first half of Joe. When the plot catalyst hits Joe (a life-threatening “brain cloud”) the protagonist gets to escape his oppressive life as a faceless worker & embark on a grand adventure in search of the titular volcano. The Double doesn’t allow its catalyst (a second Jesse Eisenberg, one less akin to George Michael Bluth) to shake things up in the same way. Ayoade instead forces his protagonist to see his grim, thankless life through to a bitter end.

Enemy (2014) & Stranger By The Lake (2014)
James & I once got in a particularly nerdy argument in a dive bar about the merits of Enemy. He was a huge fan of the film (it made his Top Ten list for the year after all), while I found it interesting, but far more self-serious than it needed to be (or maybe than I wanted it to be). Trying to discern what aspect of our personalities split us on the film (probably his love of & my aversion to philosophy), I brought up another recent release we were split on: Stranger By The Lake. In my attempts to defend Stranger in that conversation I noticed a common theme between it & Enemy. Both films feel like cryptic allegories for the dangers of carnal desire.

In an unfairly linear (& likely false) synopsis of Enemy, the protagonist’s libido tempts him to stray from intimacy with his pregnant wife to the point where his personality is split into two dueling halves. This split (again, in a deliberately simple analysis) leads the doppelgänger Jake Gyllenhaals into a deadly world of adultery & spiders. The protagonist in Stranger By The Lake, a man who regularly cruises for sexual activity on a gay nudist beach, feels a similar carnal pull. His two closest relationships, an unlikely friendship with a schlub he finds physically uninteresting but personally magnetic & a sexual affair with a very attractive man he knows to be a murderer, split his time in the same libido-driven downfall that corrupts the Gyllenhaals.

When viewed in a certain context, Enemy & Stranger can be interpreted as spiritual doubles in the parables they tell. Whether you value one over the other or not is, of course, a manner of personal preference.

Coherence (2014) & The One I Love (2014)
Two of 2014’s biggest surprises were the read-too-much-about-them-and-you’ll-ruin-them Coherence & The One I Love. Of the pair, Coherence was more of the critical darling, while The One I Love was more-or-less thought to be an interesting picture that couldn’t stick the landing. Personally, I believe The One I Love to be just as great (if not better) than Coherence. Both films push their supernatural left-turn premises to outlandish places while remaining grounded & emotionally potent. Together they help carve out a modern Romantic Horror genre (within which they’re the tiny indie equivalents to the major studio RomHorror Gone Girl).

Common assumption would suggest that Coherence’s rightful doppelgänger would be a Twilight Zone episode (particularly the classic “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street”) but it’s inseparable from The One I Love in my mind. This may not be the most surprising pairing on this list, as The One I Love also owes a hefty debt to The Twilight Zone. Enjoyment of both movies is ideally enhanced by an ignorance of their basic plots, something so delicate I fear I’m wrecking it by including them here. They both do a lot with a little, squeezing impressive mileage out of small budgets & a few great actors.

Again, my preferences & James’ were at odds over these titles, as Coherence appeared on his best of the year list & The One I Love appeared on mine. In this case we both liked both movies a good deal, though. There was no nerdy dive bar discussion necessary.

Honeymoon (2014) & Slither (2006)
Speaking of Romantic Horror, the under-the-radar Honeymoon works like Invasion of the Body Snatchers by way of Safety Not Guaranteed. Its calm, pragmatic approach to its supernatural my-wife-is-not-my-wife plot recalls the vibe of Coherence & The One I Love more than any other doppelgänger pairing on this list. All three films make the most extraordinary plots feel like conceivable relationship troubles that every couple goes through from time to time. Honeymoon is not alone in this world & the comparisons to Body Snatchers are especially well deserved, but I found other surprising similarities in the central relationship of James Gunn’s 2006 slapstick horror Slither.

Besides its own debt to Body Snatchers, Slither is wildly different from Honeymoon in tone & intent. Where the escalation in Honeymoon is calm & measured, Slither throws everything (including buckets of viscera) against the wall to see what sticks. However, the gradual escalation of unignorable changes in a spouse’s behavior binds them together. In Slither, the antagonist Grant Grant (played by world-class creep Michael Rooker) initially seems a bit out of it to his wife following an incident in the woods. The changes in his behavior spiral out of control in the most horrifying (and shockingly funny) ways imaginable. Honeymoon’s horror hinges on its own in-the-woods behavior altering event, but the results are decidedly a quieter form of terror, as opposed to Slither’s fever-pitched absurdity.

These movies aren’t broadly linked in their approaches to horror, but instead in the detail of their threats’ gradual revelations to the ones they love.

The Face of Love (2014) & Birth (2004)
The least successful film on this list artistically, The Face of Love attempts the grounded approach to the paranormal Coherence & The One I Love achieve, but ultimately falls short. Despite an interesting premise & some great performances from familiar faces Annette Benning, Ed Harris, and Robin Williams, the film never breaks through the trappings of an undistinguished trifle. Part of the problem is that an eerily similar plot has been executed so well before in Jonathan Glazer’s Birth.

The Face of Love mirrors Birth’s story of a woman who improbably meets her husband after his death, but takes it to less ambiguous, less visually striking territory. It’s not a bad movie exactly, but instead a mediocre version of its superior double. Both movies tackle the grieving process in an unusual manner, but Birth does it better. There are images & moments from Birth that will stick with me my entire life. I expect I’ll forget most of The Face of Love within the month.

It’s a bit unfair to include a movie here only to suggest that there’s a better version of it out there, but in the end it’s the doppelgänger’s job to kill its weaker double. It’s only natural.

-Brandon Ledet

Wrestling for Jesus: The Tale of T-Money (2011)

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wrestlingjesus

twohalfstar

The very last pro wrestling documentary I watched when assembling my Top Ten list for the genre was GLOW, the story of an over-the-top 80s glam wrestling promotion that saw brief success on television. Wrestling for Jesus was a jarring, smelling salts follow-up to GLOW. It pulled me out of GLOW’s glitter-covered reverie only to wake me on the small-town poverty side of wrestling. This is the wrestling of backyards & gymnasiums, where audience members were likely to have attended high school or at least church with the performers. Where the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling bragged about how they were the greatest show on Earth, the men of WFJ thought themselves to be, you know, pretty good and some of them would even like to maybe get paid a small sum of money for risking life-altering injuries in the Lord’s name.

The wrestlers who express interest in making a modest amount of money for their time and compromised health are secular defectors of the Wrestling For Jesus promotion. WFJ, as a non-profit organization, accepts donations for their live events, but those donations are directly given to the church. The events themselves are an extension of church in a way. Performers’ promos boast about their ability to spread the gospel & sermons are delivered from the ring after matches. These men are wrestling solely for Jesus, to bring new followers into their faith through sports entertainment, not to make money. As far as recruitment tactics go, it’s a fairly convincing one.

However, participation in WFJ isn’t entirely selfless. At the very least the WFJ community helped the titular T-Money overcome the grief surrounding his father’s suicide. T-Money’s triumph over his grief may have been short-lived, but he basically thanks WFJ (an organization he runs with his wife) for saving his life. As the film progresses, his WFJ-aided recovery gradually reveals itself to be one step on a long road that would see rougher patches (like his own suicide attempt & a domestic violence arrest). T-Money sounds conflicted at times about whether he believes WFJ is a positive or negative long-term influence in his life, confessing that sometimes he hides his true personality in the community’s presence. It’s likely he’s also hiding his true self in the camera’s presence. The refusal to follow this thread of thought to a satisfying conclusion is the documentary’s fatal flaw.

There’s a sense that T-Money is on the brink of a personal epiphany that the movie doesn’t stick around to discover with him. When one of his fellow WFJ performers breaks his neck in the ring, T-Money is moved to tears in his proclamation that he wishes it was his own neck that had broken instead. The injured wrestler appears to be pleased with his time in WFJ, believing he had sacrificed his body to a noble cause. T-Money appears less convinced, but the movie doesn’t follow him long enough (or push him to speak honestly enough) to find out what that means.

Unresolved ending aside, the filmmakers do a fine job of remaining objective when they could easily have made their subject look foolish or evil. That objectivity doesn’t exactly shield the Christian wrestlers from the incongruity of infusing religion into a sport built on camp & violence, but it does allow them to be sympathetic even as the phenomenon feels increasingly bizarre. Wrestling for Jesus was far from the most essential wrestling doc I’ve seen in recent months, but also far from the worst. WFJ‘s Achilles heel is that its fascinating subject could have made for a much better movie if only the filmmakers had allowed it more time to develop & pushed for more honesty. If director Nathan Clarke couldn’t afford to dig deeper, his film could have at least benefited from some of GLOW’s outlandish hubris. There’s nothing like some old-fashioned self-aggrandizing to cover up a lackluster wrestling program.

Wrestling For Jesus is currently streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

-Brandon Ledet

Swampflix’s Top Films of 2014

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snopiercershoe

1. Snowpiercer – A high-concept dystopian sci-fi parable, our choice for Movie of the Year is likely to leave you with more questions than answers. However, if you avoid getting wrapped up in the literal mechanics of how its world functions or in its generic political philosophy, there’s an excess of violence, absurdity, and genuine heart bending over backwards to entertain you. It’s a wildly exciting ride for those who stop questioning its methods and instead submit to its charms.

2. The Babadook – The best horror film of 2014 is flooded with genuine scares essential to the genre, but its true threat is more intimate & psychological than what you’d find in a traditional monster movie. The Babadook will linger in your mind for days, months. Maybe forever.

3. Gone Girl – The Lifetime movie this film pretends to be in its first half is merely a cover-up of the excessive, sociopathic spectacle lurking under the surface. Fincher proves again that he can do no wrong.

4. Interstellar – Grand, epic, visually striking. The volume & variety of complaints surrounding this wonderful film has got to be the most hilarious joke of 2014.

5. Blue Ruin – A grim, realistic, edge-of-your-seat revenge thriller that hits familiar beats carved out by directors like Jeff Nichols & The Coen brothers without ever feeling redundant.

6. We Are the Best! – A heartwarming story about three adolescents discovering their inner punks. These kids are the best.

7. Under The Skin – Haunting. Sparse yet loaded with unforgettable images & sounds. Glazer is a genius.

8. The Grand Budapest Hotel – Wes Anderson seems to be testing just how much Wes Anderson people can take with his last couple of features. When he’s working with images this strong & performances as hilarious as Ralph Fiennes’ is here, we can take a lot.

9 The One I Love – A romantic trip into The Twilight Zone that’s both hilarious & thought-provoking. We’re not sure if Romantic Horror is a genre, but this film might qualify if it were.

10. Venus in Fur – Disregarding Polanski’s personal life, you have to give him credit here for turning a delicate premise into such a humorous, sensual, and metatextual success. Venus is brilliantly acted, masterfully escalated, and wonderfully critical of both sex politics & theater as an art form.

HM. Obvious Child – Approaching a sensitive subject from a sincere & deeply empathetic place, this film deserves to be recognized as one of the all-time great romantic comedies. Or at least one of the best in recent memory.

-The Swampflix Crew

Read Britnee’s picks here.
Read James’ picks here.
Read Brandon’s picks here.

Brandon’s Top Ten Pro Wrestling Documentaries

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wrasslin

Between a few friends’ recently renewed enthusiasm for professional wrestling & my own recent introduction to the wrestling-heavy comic book series Love & Rockets, something happened in me last September: I started watching again. I’ve easily watched more pro wrestling in the past four months than I have in the last decade. A young fan during the sport’s famed Attitude Era, I lost my enthusiasm sometime in high school, a loss I now regret. Not keeping up with wrestling over the years meant missing out on large doses of my favorite two elements in popular media: camp & violence.

Approaching the sport as an adult, however, camp & violence weren’t entirely enough. I also craved context, something I never questioned as a teen. In addition to the countless matches I’ve watched in recent months, I’ve also been greedily consuming documentaries on the sport. The following list is the most helpful films I’ve found in my search for context. Together, they combine to explain to outsiders just what makes wrestling so fascinating & how it evolved to become the violent, campy spectacle it is today.

1. Beyond the Mat (1999) – Widely considered the Citizen Kane of the genre, Beyond the Mat is more of a love letter to the sport than an objective documentary. The 90s vibe is potent here. Vince McMahon is drunk on the power the Attitude Era has afforded him (a level of power he hadn’t tasted since the 80s). The close friendship detailed between hardcore legends Mick Foley & Terry Funk is movingly sincere. The devastating Jake “The Snake” Roberts scenes could conceivably have been research material for Aronofsky’s masterful film The Wrestler (right down to the troubled relationship with his daughter). The narrator’s urge to explain the basic appeal of a sport he loves, a sport that to many people “isn’t real” feels antiquated, but it’s more than forgivable given the time of production. If you’re looking for a beginner’s guide to appreciating pro wrestling as entertainment, this movie is a great place to start. If you already have any affection for the sport you will still love every minute of it, even when it makes you feel like shit.

2. Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows (1998) – While Beyond the Mat documents the state of pro wrestling at the height of the Attitude Era, Wrestling With Shadows does a fine job of defining exactly what made that specific era so distinct. Wrestling icon Bret Hart struggles within the film to reconcile his own 80s-minded ideals of what the sport should be (especially in how it’s viewed by children) with the extreme late-90s direction it was going. There’s also some essential insight into Bret’s father, Stu Hart’s “The Dungeon” training room and the infamous Montreal Screwjob incident involving Bret. Both topics are interesting in how much the camera reveals as well as what it withholds. Is there more to the story than what we’re told? Hard to tell, but it’s still very informative even when mysterious. Unfortunately, Wrestling With Shadows also boasts the worst soundtrack I’ve ever, ever encountered in a documentary (a depressingly common problem with the genre). It’s a truly laughable distraction in an otherwise entertaining movie.

3. I’m From Hollywood (1989) – Andy Kaufman’s posthumous “documentary” (more of a mockumentary, really) about his wrestling career is unambiguously an angle, a continuation of an in-ring storyline. In the 80’s Kaufman fashioned himself an infamously effective heel by proclaiming himself the Inter-gender Wrestling Champion and challenging women in the audience to step up as his opponents. This escalated to a very public feud with wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler that both men sold beautifully. It’s both amazing & unsurprising how well pro wrestling fit into Kaufman’s fucking-with-your-reality style of comedy. In its finest moments I’m From Hollywood is a document of how the demented, proto-Tim Heidecker genius Kaufman utilized the sport as a form of high art. It works best when interviewees like Jerry Lawler & the late Robin Williams are committed to the joke, as opposed to folks like Tony Danza who refuse to play along.

4. GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (2012) – A few of the docs on this list play into the self-aggrandizing of wrestling promos that make their subjects sound like The Best Thing Ever. The GLOW documentary excels at this showy brand of self-promotion that’s so inherent to the sport; it really does make GLOW look & sound way better than it could have conceivably been. This makes sense, considering the 80s wrestling company/television show it documents (“the only all-female wrestling show there’s ever been”) was firmly invested in the entertainment end of “sports entertainment”. The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling could wrestle, no doubt, but they mostly started as amateurs (hopeful actresses & models) roped into the business in boy-band levels of commercial-minded schemes & manipulation. The story of GLOW is the story of a brief, unlikely cultural phenomenon fueled by 80s glam, over-the-top camp, novelty rapping, and genuine beasts & bad-asses. All of this precious material is backed up by a wealth of televised footage to support the interviews & the best soundtrack of any film on this list (provided by outsider post-punk geniuses ESG).

5. Barbed Wire City: The Unauthorized Story of ECW (2013) – It’s difficult to find a truthful, comprehensive look into the legendary Extreme Championship Wrestling promotion among the various failed attempts. Barbed Wire City is a godsend of a corrective to that problem. Easily the best take on the subject to date, it features interviews from both world-class shit-talker (and morally-questionable businessman) Paul Hayman and the very people he built up & arguably screwed over. Barbed Wire City also postures ECW as the wrestling equivalent of the Roger Corman Film School, where talents would develop ideas & characters in a gritty environment before moving onto the big leagues (to the organization’s demise). It distinguishes itself from other docs in the genre by featuring interviews with old-school ECW fans (including a dorked-out Billy Corgan) who helped make organization special just as much as the performers did. Its actually-listenable post-rock soundtrack also assists in making it a godsend among its peers.

6. The Unreal Story of Professional Wrestling (1999) – A (mildly-condescending) history of old-school “wrasslin”, The Unreal Story explains how pro wrestling adapted from traveling circus to television mainstay. Although Steve Allen’s snarky narration in this TV doc prevents it from achieving the heartfelt love-letter status of Beyond the Mat, it does a great job of giving the evolution of the sport a historical context. My favorite outlandish claim from The Unreal Story is that Egyptian hieroglyphics depicting wrestling came with ancient promos that included insults threatening to make opponents “bleed before the Pharaoh” . . . brother. Not only is this history lesson informative (especially in its profiles of old greats like Gorgeous George & Ricki Starr), but it also offers a strange perspective of a time when 90s media did not know how to handle the Attitude Era’s sudden surge in popularity except to look backwards.

7. Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling (2004) – A fascinating profile of the pioneer crop of 1950’s women wrestlers, it’s mostly comprised of modern interviews fleshed out with brief clips of televised matches, photographs, stock footage & era-defining television clips from game & variety shows. I’ve seen a few lackluster wrestling documentaries that are put together this way, but Lipstick avoids mediocrity by giving a mic to women who rarely get to speak at length & covering a subject that rarely gets its due time in the spotlight. It also serves as an interesting account of how pro wrestling evolved from the traveling carnival circuit to television, making it a sort of companion piece to The Unreal Story. At the very least, it’s like spending 90min kicking back a six-pack with the world’s coolest, most foul-mouthed old biddies.

8. Scott Hall: The Wrestler (2011) – A 20min ESPN short recommended for those who aren’t depressed enough by Jake “The Snake” Roberts’ story arc in Beyond the Mat. Documenting “Razor Ramon”/Scott Hall’s struggles with substance abuse, his own role as an absent father and the damage pro wrestling has inflicted on his body & his mind, the intimacy of this movie will destroy you. For folks seeking fame & recognition within pro wrestling, this doc should serve as a reminder to take care of themselves in the process.

9. MTV’s True Life: I’m A Pro Wrestler (1999) – This trifle boasts some valuable locker-room footage from the Attitude Era that serves as a strange time capsule of both a period when wrestling was a white-hot commodity and when performers Chyna & HHH were white-hot romantically. Most importantly, though, there’s some essential insight into the toll the training process can take on a fresh body as well as the dedication it takes to survive that toll. The short-form doc is a tryptic depicting life before, during, and after pro wrestling fame, a surprisingly balanced & thoughtful approach, considering it’s an MTV production.

10. Pinfall (2011) – An even more focused look at the pro wrestling training process than the True Life episode mentioned above, this small-scale short follows British wrestling fan & amateur filmmaker Adam Pacitti as he attempts to train for a wrestling match in just one month’s time. Pacitti initially enters the process with the wrong mentality & wrong physicality (especially in regards to his belief that he could properly train within a month) and is relentlessly punished for his naivety. In its most valuable contributions to the genre, the film offers both a unique look at the exact training patterns new wrestlers must follow as well as the disconnect between the hubris of what a fan believes they can accomplish in the ring & the harsh realities of a sport outsiders don’t believe to be “real” at all.

-Brandon Ledet

Scooby-Doo (2002)

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scooby-doo

three star

EPSON MFP image

The idea of a live-action Scooby-Doo movie was unappealing enough to put me off for over a decade. There was just no way I could imagine the product as anything but hokey & outdated. The truth wasn’t that far off. The jokes in the 2002 Scooby-Doo were cheap & hokey, but no more cheap & hokey than its Hanna-Barbera source material. Adding an air of sophistication to a cartoon about a half-talking dog who solves mysteries with his stoner owner/bro would surely be a misstep. No, to do it right, you’d have to include some stunt cameos (including a bizarrely intimate moment with the band Sugar Ray), some “you meddling kids” call-backs and, of course, a multiple-scene fart gag. Something for the parents, something for the kids.

It was the curious detail of James Gunn’s screenplay credit that eventually brought me around on the idea. How could the twisted mind behind Slither and Tromeo & Juliet be responsible for a franchise so seemingly innocuous? The answer, obviously, is that Scooby-Doo actually has some sharp teeth hidden in its smiling jowls. Among the Sugar Rays & fart gags, Gunn worked in some subversive humor about things like Fred’s masculine vanity, murderous monsters, gender swapping, and Shaggy’s love of Mary Jane (a character whose name is winked at you too hard to ignore even if you wanted to). It’s not like this line of writer’s room mischief (including the drug culture references) wasn’t present in the hippie-era Scooby cartoons. It was there. Gunn just has a clever way of updating that rebellious spirit with just enough snark & meta-commentary to make it feel modern without undermining his screenplay’s reverence for the source material. It’s that balance of perverse pranks & childlike exuberance that Gunn brought to last year’s Guardians of the Galaxy, as opposed to the unbridled sadism he infused in projects like Super & 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake. Scooby-Doo is far from James Gunn’s most personal work, but it’s easy to find his personality in it.

The only crippling flaw I can find in this (mercifully short) trifle is the shoddy CGI on the monsters & Scooby himself, which seems like an important detail to nail. Otherwise, it exceeded most expectations, especially in the 90s/00s flashback cast. Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddy Prinze Jr, Linda Cardenelli, and Matthew Lillard were kinda perfect as the Mystery Inc. crew. Lillard’s Shaggy was so perfect, in fact, that he still provides the voice for the character’s current animated incarnation. Unfortunately, bringing back the same cast (with welcome additions Peter Boyle & Alicia Silverstone) and James Gunn’s pen for 2004’s Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed failed to overcome the sequel law of diminishing returns. Monsters Unleashed boasts the same brand of hokey fun as its predecessor, but with the sharp teeth & personality removed. It’s the bland paycheck project I expected when I read James Gunn’s screenplay credit on the original. Instead I was treated to some great, dumb, mischievous fun. I shouldn’t have waited twelve years for that treat.

-Brandon Ledet

Brandon’s Top Films of 2014

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top2014

1. Interstellar – The volume & variety of complaints surrounding this wonderful film has got to be the most hilarious joke of 2014. The score was beautiful, the recorded messages scene was a soul crusher, and the goofy back end felt like trashy, old-school sci-fi serials in the best way.

2. Snowpiercer – Deliciously excessive, hilariously absurd, cartoonishly violent. The half-baked political philosophy is mostly inconsequential, placing the movie in a long line of vague haves-vs-have-nots dystopian sci-fi whose world-building is entirely purposed for a badassery delivery system. It delivers. Just don’t take it too seriously.

3. The Guest – A John Carpenter throwback where the villain’s mask is a handsome smile. It’s packed with enough humor, cruelty, synths, blood, smoke machines & genre-bending to entertain/seduce/corrupt the whole family.

4. Wetlands – Most likely the cutest movie about an anal fissure you’ll ever see. It was a good year for weird rom-coms and this one gets huge bonus points for managing to stick to the format while plunging into de Sade levels of depravity.

5. Under The Skin – Haunting. Sparse yet loaded with unforgettable images & sounds. Glazer is a genius.

6. The Grand Budapest Hotel – Wes Anderson seems to be testing just how much Wes Anderson people can take with his last couple of features. I can take a lot, especially with performances as hilarious as Ralph Fiennes is here.

7. We Are The Best! – Those kids are the best.

8. The Babadook – Approaching this horror flick as a traditional creature feature is a huge mistake. The real threat is psychological and way more disturbing for it.

9. Blue Ruin – A realistic thriller that hits familiar beats carved out by people like Jeff Nichols & The Coen Bros without feeling at all redundant.

10. The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears – The kaleidoscopic imagery & sound design are as intense as anything you’d expect from a Lynch, Jodorowsky, Argento, Glazer or Carruth. It was like if Under The Skin didn’t let every striking image bleed out, but instead threw a new one at you every few seconds.

HM. The One I Love, Frank, Obvious Child, Venus In Fir, Life After Beth – All five of these titles turned the most delicate of premises that could have turned into cutesy, winking indie trifles into refreshingly earnest/honest discourse. They’re all really good & totally worthwhile even if they aren’t The Best Thing EVER.

-Brandon Ledet