FARCE/FILM Episode 16: A Serious Man

--> Episode 16: 10/28/09 <--

Hosts: Colin George, Tyler Drown, Kevin Mauer

Intro - 00:00

Top 5 - 05:40

A Serious Man - 17:26

Events and Outro - 52:52

"A Serious Man"

Colin:

Tyler:

Kevin:

"Youth in Revolt" Review

"Youth in Revolt" had enormous potential as the anti-indie indie. My disdain for the stale, 'quirky' writing and cutesy filmmaking that characterize modern independent filmmaking has been well documented, and the majority of director Miguel Arteta's R-rated film challenges those conventions. That the prince of Sundance himself, Michael Cera, stars in the picture creates an immediate expectation for its content, which is dashed even before the projection of the first image.

Heavy breathing, a corporate logo. We open on Cera as wimpishly named protagonist Nick Twisp masturbating to a 'Hustler' magazine. "Paper Heart" this is not.

The film, based on a novel by C.D. Payne, is refreshing for its willingness to portray characters with conflicted morality, offering an account of the teenage experience that doesn't just jack "Juno's" offbeat precociousness. The disturbing trend in recent indie comedies, emerging probably with "Napoleon Dynamite," has been to sculpt worlds bereft of genuine character conflict. This architectural sentimentality punctuates a Mr. Rogers-esque coda: everyone is special in their own special way.

In "Youth in Revolt," Twisp creates an alter-ego for himself in order to win the heart of his trailer-park sweetheart Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday). Enter Francois Dillinger. The character, also Cera, but accentuated by a pencil-thin mustache and eternally lit cigarette, is an exercise in antithesis for Twisp. While under the sway of his deadpan Frenchman persona, the character engages in some legitimately shocking behavior, the hilarious highlight of which is causing a multimillion-dollar fire in a sleepy metropolitan cafe via a stolen trailer with the words, "God's perfect asshole," spray-painted on the side. That phrase alone is too brazenly vulgar to have belonged to any other indie film this year. The latter half of "Youth in Revolt" largely consists of Twisp/Dillenger digging himself into deeper and deeper criminal trouble, all with the intention of winning over the elusive Saunders. Other memorable sequences include a half-naked escape from a French prep school, grand theft auto, and cross-dressing.

These are the sort of legitimately quirky plot points indie auteurs should aspire to, and they make a huge difference in shaping a memorable experience, but unfortunately, even "Youth in Revolt" fails to follow through. By the end, the raunchy, surprising, and darkly comedic elements cave to a typically Hollywood schmaltzy ending. Twisp is arrested for his crimes, but still gets the girl and learns a lesson: Sheeni didn't love him for Dillenger, she loved him for Twisp all along. She's going to wait for him to get out of juvenile hall (it shouldn't take that long!). Give me a break.

A riskier ending could have forgiven the film its more minor flaws, which instead make "Youth in Revolt" a tricky film to score. It's a little overlong, perhaps more a function of uneven pacing than the actual running time, and the use of animation for a few of the sequences doesn't serve any immediate purpose beyond servicing a faux home-made aesthetic.

Those as sick of even hearing the word "indie" as I am certainly won't lose any sleep over skipping "Youth in Revolt." Still, it's nice to see Cera branch out a bit, even if Dillenger is a decidedly undemanding role, and the body of the film takes more risks than any mainstream independent comedy in recent memory.

It may not be the anti-indie indie, but it's not another clone.

3.5/5

"Antichrist" Review

It sounds perverse to even express enjoyment of Lars von Trier's "Antichrist," as bleak and twisted a portrait of misery as any committed to celluloid or canvas. Inasmuch, the most descriptive compliment I can pay the film is 'fearless.' "Antichrist" disarms its audience early, with an incredible high-shutter close-up of an erect penis before penetration, and becomes exponentially more shocking and less tasteful from there. The act of intercourse between He and She (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg portray the unnamed characters) serves as the impetus for the cryptically metaphoric story; their passionate lovemaking is juxtaposed with the death of their child, who falls from a window in their negligence.

Gainsbourg's character suffers from a crippling postmortem depression, including an implacable fear of death itself. She stifles these imbalances sexually, with and against the better judgment of her husband. Dafoe's Man is a psychologist, taking it upon himself to dispel his wife's fear through assimilation with the source of her overwhelming anxiety. Von Trier's portrayal of Woman has instigated accusations of misogyny. She is emotional, irrational, and helpless, with the interpretation of the latter half of the film, during which She becomes a decided antagonist, being that She is the 'Antichrist' of the title. The character is demeaning, perhaps, but I don't feel von Trier's depiction of man is any more flattering. Predicated on cold logic and condescending passive-aggression, He is incapable of love.

He takes Her to the forest (they call it 'Eden'), where the two have a decrepit cabin. The woods are filled with death, dying and decaying creatures, and as He begins treating her fear, succumbs to it himself. The film, full of ghastly, macabre photography, seems to exist in a world without good. Any moment of happiness or even placidity in "Antichrist" is overshadowed by manipulation or mutilation. The movie makes an abrupt about-face halfway through as the control dynamic shifts between the characters, and von Trier devilishly steps off the low end of the seesaw, leaving his audience to feel the impact. What follows is unrepentantly gory, culminating with Gainsbourg's character performing a self-circumcision with a pair of scissors.

What symbolic meaning is intended in the literal removal of Her womanhood is never revealed, and the closest the film comes to enlightening its audience is in the revelation of a thesis project She had written on the correlation between Satan and nature, and nature and woman. Still, to suggest She, or woman generally, is the antichrist seems a deceptively easy interpretation to write the film off on. The antichrist, if anything, seems be the architect of this world.

Von Trier has been miserly in offering answers to those confused or offended by his film, but the less he shapes his audience's interpretation, the more potent "Antichrist" becomes. It ebbs at the inky corners of the mind like an inexplicable piece of dark magic; von Trier would rather bewilder than satisfy. His efforts make for a particularly brutal, challenging psychological horror film that will likely dissatisfy anyone in the theater expecting to be conventionally frightened. The film asks a lot of its audience in indulging in a world of complete, restless unhappiness, and many would rather label it as derogatory or exploitative, when its clear the film's primary intention is exhibiting absolute inhumanity. "Antichrist" is like the film equivalent of Francisco Goya's "Saturn Devouring his Son."

And in that respect, von Trier's film is nearly flawless. Minor distractions like the violence, which feels too familiar in the age of "Saw" to deliver the appropriate impact, and the aggressive, borderline pretentious cinematography occasionally upstage the story, but cannot detract much from the power of the experience. That the film is powerful is, I think, inarguable, as every opinion on the piece has been defended passionately. Regardless of where yours falls, however, "Antichrist" is the sort of film that sticks to you. Love it or hate it, but you won't forget it, and that's all truly fearless storytelling can hope for.

4.5/5

FARCE/FILM Episode 15: Where the Wild Things Are, Zombieland

--> Episode 15: 10/19/05 <--

Hosts: Colin George, Tyler Drown, Laura Rachfalski, and Micah Haun (briefly)

Intro - 00:00

Top 5 - 03:05

Where the Wild Things Are - 06:45

Drive-in Tripe Feature - 21:27

("Zombieland", "Fame", "Surrogates")

Philadelphia Film Festival - 38:51

("Youth in Revolt", "Good Hair", "Antichrist")

The Invention of Lying - 56:53

Events and Outro - 01:02:45

"Where the Wild Things Are"
Colin:
Tyler:
Laura:

"Zombieland"
Colin:
Laura:
Micah:

"Youth in Revolt"
Colin:
Laura:

"Good Hair"
Laura:

"Antichrist"
Colin:

"The Invention of Lying"
Tyler:

"Where the Wild Things Are" Review

"Where the Wild Things Are" couldn't possibly match public expectation compounded over time with interest. The film has been in development under Spike Jonze for the better part of the decade, with studio interest in the property dating as far back as the early eighties. Disney, Universal, and Warner Brothers' thirty-year game of hot potato has finally landed in American cineplexes, but as with any product gestated over comparable length, ends up unfavorably compared to an ideal preconception. "Wild Things" is imperfect, but nestles into a peculiar crevice where it doesn't disappoint, either. It's as faithful an adaptation as one could reasonably expect of a ten-sentence story, and Jonze's vision of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book is fierce, unflinching, and mature. The director takes particular care in elaborating that "Where the Wild Things Are" is not necessarily a film for children; it's a film about children.

Enter Max (Max Records), as emotionally inscrutable an eight year old as, well, any actual eight year old. In contrast to your Pinocchios and your Charlie Buckets, Max embodies an astounding emotional range, compliments Records' chameleon-like propensity to adapt at a moments notice to being fearful, shy, boasting, ebullient, or enraged. These traits get passed along to the temperamental wild things as well, whose petty squabbles and secret loves substitute for traditional plot points in driving the movie forward.

Certainly a novel premise, Jonze deserves a lot of credit for attempting the unconventional and the uncommercial in directing his first indisputably mainstream picture, even when it doesn't quite work. There are moments of transient beauty and touching affection, but watching the monsters emote can be an uninvolving experience just as often. Maybe it's because Max recedes into the background during some of these sequences, or because the creatures don't seem like products of his imagination so much as they do Jonze's or Sendak's. It may just be that "Where the Wild Things Are" suffers under the duress of being strung out on the rack and stretched to satisfy the requirements of a feature film.

Still, "Wild Things" is a difficult film to criticize given its incredible earnestness and Jonze's clear, unifying vision. As evidenced by some of its most favorable reviews, there will be those with whom the film will form an intimate bond and deeply move. And, as evidenced by the lukewarm Rotten Tomatoes consensus score, there will be just as many that won't see anything of themselves in Max or the wild things, children who will be frightened or bored by the director's approach to the fantastic, and still more on whom the film will leave no impression whatsoever. "Wild things" is deeply personal and subjectively polarizing from its conception, but to dilute its appeal would be to compromise its artistic integrity.

I see the greatness in "Wild Things," and envy those who made a complete connection with the piece. There are moments that strike nostalgic chords in me, tapping the raw emotional experience of my childhood, but are hardly omnipresent. My critical analysis is ultimately futile, ridiculous even, in its attempt to define a movie about feelings using blunt logic. "Where the Wild Things Are" is Max's world, Jonze's proxy, and if that comes at the expense of feeling sometimes inaccessible to me or the general audience, the director makes no apologies for it.

4/5

Surrogates: The First Thirty Minutes or So

I've never walked out of a movie before, and I suppose that record remains untarnished given that leaving "Surrogates" can only be accurately described as a drive-out. To help you form a better case ID for my psychological state at the time, it's important to point out that it was a particularly chilly early October evening at the drive-in, and we had to run the AC in the car every ten minutes to keep the front windshield from fogging up. It had also become rather close to midnight, and when "Surrogates" didn't immediately hook me, I made no apologies for feeling sleepy.

As far as I could tell from the first half hour of the film, "Surrogates" spends a lot of time setting up its world, without explaining why surrogacy is actually a thing.

To the uninitiated, surrogates are robotic avatars that humans remotely operate to perform the menial tasks involved in their day-to-day lives, however the concept employs an inherent double standard. Namely, you can have sex as your surrogate, and it's supposed to feel totally righteous or whatever, but apparently the machines are also incapable of relaying pain to their hosts. How is it possible for them to differentiate the perceptions of pain and pleasure or transmit one and not the other? What if you're into S&M? Furthermore, why is experiencing life through a surrogate preferable to a first-hand experience?

These questions swam back and forth in my drowsy mind as Bruce Willis and his possibly sentient hairpiece began investigating the death of certain hosts via their surrogates. In each case there was some guy blasting the robot with a special electricity gun. Seems like a pretty open and shut case, boys.

And then a Rastafarian cult leader showed up, and with his head edge lit by the sun, spoke directly to me. I knew the rest of the film would be too great a struggle to overcome.

I can't, in good conscience, give "Surrogates" a numerical score, but it receives the dubious honor of being the first film to literally drive me away.

"Fame" Review

While I concede that I am not among the target demographic for "Fame," I still feel qualified to inform you that the film is a piece of shit. Its failures reach far beyond the fact that I couldn't possibly care less about students of the performing arts singing and dancing their way to the top. It's a rickety, poorly conceived and bewilderingly constructed fiasco with cliched, interchangeable characters overcoming what are surely life's most trivial challenges ultimately to perform some bizarre, evidently uplifting Cirque du Soleil knock-off at graduation.

"Fame" attempts to create compelling fiction by way of reality TV. "So You Think You Can Dance?" or "American Idol," or any other prime-time talent-off currently on air bares more in common with director Kevin Tancharoen's film than whatever's playing in the adjacent theater. Appropriately then, Tancharoen comes from a music television background, having directed episodes of winners like "The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll," "Dancelife," and something called "The JammX Kids," which imdb informs me is also known by the title, "Can't Dance, Don't Want To."

So in all fairness, Tanchaeoen may have looked on paper like the perfect candidate to direct a remake of the 1980 film of the same title. Unfortunately, he seems to have no artistic comprehension of how the mediums of film and television (let alone reality television) fundamentally differ in their approach to storytelling. He employs a fast-paced music video editing style that makes it difficult to follow what withered conventional story "Fame" has, or even to keep track of who's who or what plot or character archetype is most currently being exploited.

And the film is mostly devoid of likable characters, as each of the featured students has next to no screen time to themselves, each recalling the developed protagonist of some other, better movie. There's the uptight, book-smart girl who needs to learn to embrace her spontaneity, the headstrong street-smart kid who's too macho to be artsy, the girl whose parents want her to become a classical pianist even though her proclivity is for singing, and my personal favorite, an out-of-place pretentious filmmaker with his ubiquitous camcorder recording all the break-out dance numbers that just, you know, happen in those types of schools. To top it off, the characters all fall under the sway of their universally tough love 'tell it like it is' professors.

It's not fair though to hawk all of the films problems off on Tancharoen, as Allison Burnett's screenplay is every bit as scattershot, grating, and uninvolving as the final product, and the cast, who fulfill their contractual obligations to sing, dance and occasionally speak, never go very far above or beyond that. "Fame" is just a limp noodle of a film that I couldn't possibly recommend to anyone who doesn't have a preexisting interest in the performing arts, and I have a feeling even that subset will probably be let down by its blandly talented cast and major dramatic shortcomings.

When you get right down to it, there are a thousand reasons not to waste your money, or even very much more time on "Fame." From the staccato pacing to the cookie-cutter characters and complete lack of dramatic tension, the film plays not only like a remake, but a retread of ideas that have been executed better a hundred times over, making this superfluous, half-baked, intellect deficient cash-grab a one-note disaster.

1.5/5