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Out in Theaters: NYMPHOMANIAC: PART 1

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“Nymphomaniac: Part 1”
Directed by Lars von Trier
Starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stacy Martin, Stellan Skarsgard, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Sophie Kennedy Clark
Drama
118 Mins
NR

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Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Joe, a woman looking back on her life with deep-seated scorn, hounding for condemnation, beaten and broken. We meet her lying on the knotted facade of a cobblestone street corner, caked with dark, unexplained bruises, limp and abandoned like a dove craddling a broken wing. To the head banging tune of Rammstein‘s thumping German heavy metal, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard) spots Joe crumpled under a gentle but deadly snowfall. After attempts to contact the authorities are met with threats of her fleeing the scene, he takes her home for some bed rest and a steamy cup of Earl Grey.

Upon his bed, she finds in Seligman’s comfort a private confessional for her laundry list of lustful sins. Seligman is her priest, her unwavering forgiver, her absolver of indecencies past and present. From the first chapter of her life of loose sexual morals, Seligman is compassionate and curious towards Joe. It’s a first contact moment, like an alien interviewing its first human. The only way he knows how to approach her is by relating her carnal conquests to the deft arts of fly fishing.

Seligman seeks to understand the instinctual explanations behind her erotic urges, quickly transforming into a dual supporter and therapist for Joe. As she attempts to rap off her worst transgressions,  Seligman is there with a sound interpretation of why she’s not really to blame. Their offbeat relationship is entirely unique, a perversely complex dance of savior and saved, all anchored by Gainsbourg and Skaarsgard’s wonderfully grounded pair of performances.

While Gainsbourg prattles off her top of the charts, worst of the worst list of dirty deeds like a dark fairy tale narrator, Stacy Martin guides us through the experiences firsthand. From the inklings of her sexual self-discovery to her playing a game of “who can bang the most dudes on this train ride,” Joe is a force of nature and Martin’s fearless performance paves the way for her undying depth of character. Though the older, more embittered version of Joe brews with regret and self-hatred, young Joe is full of life. She wants the whole world of men, in every shape, size and color.

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Joe’s sexuality is her weapon and she wields it like a long sword. Having managed to completely divorce sex from emotional connection, as her list of suitors grow so does her heartlessness. Eventually managing entire relationships by the roll of a dice, Joe gets tangled up in a hysterical middle chapter led with brutish force by an unbound Uma Thurman. It’s been years since Thurman has put her name to something so iconic and unforgettable. And in a film stuffed with fantastic performances, hers is an implausible highlight, impossible to ignore. Her brief vignette brings humor and hardship to the table, serving them up as the same dish, indistinguishable and essential as one and the same.

In this marriage of comedy and tragedy, Trier mines the unparalleled success of Nymphomaniac. Captured through an admirable stripped down cinesphere of grubby locales and queued with a truly bipolar score, the technical aspects surrounding the film are a deft house of cards. Without cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro‘s grim but provocative pictures, the uninviting hospitality of Trier’s landscape would lose its oddly captivating appeal. In a way, Joe’s scarred humanity is a victim of circumstance, a product of his European bleakness.

Through all, Joe’s often brutal, cold mentality is accented by Trier’s uncharacteristically warm and understanding direction. For all her self-deprecation, we’re left wondering what to make of her tidal wave of remorse, especially in a patriarchal society. Would an older gentleman display such penitence? Obviously not. Is her unscrupulous vaginal record the fault of her ice queen mother? A few hours in, we haven’t yet pinpointed the source of Joe’s despondent temperament but we’re beginning to understand. And though old Joe may be depressive, Trier’s film most certainly is not.

An oddball combination for sure, it’s truly a wonder that Nymphomaniac works as well as it does, especially considering that this is only the first part of an ongoing saga (and you definitely feel the punch of a truncated story). One might have thought that nearly five hours of sexual confession (and one montage of penises) is too much. After seeing the first two hours though, all I can say is bring on part 2.

A-

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Talking with Miles Teller of DIVERGENT

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Miles Teller has gone from zero to hero in the last few years. With roles in films like Whiplash, Rabbit Hole and The Spectacular Now, Teller has shown an intriguing dramatic side that all but evens out the heap of not-so-inspiring (read: disastrous) broad comedies he’s participated in, take for example 21 and Over and That Awkward Moment. Looking towards the future, Teller has a lot of promise so long as he continues to involve himself in solid project while he’s busy paying the bills with mainstream crud. With The Fantastic Four on the horizon, the only question is how high will Teller’s star rise?

 

Over the prattle and coos of preteen girls, Teller and I had a chance to chat at the Seattle premiere of his latest, and largest, film yet: Divergent. But we only talked briefly about the YA wannabe sensation, to preference some of his more serious roles. We touched on drumming, the recurring themes of his fledgling career, his trajectory since college and what makes him an all around bad ass.

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So I caught Whiplash down at Sundance. Loved the movie, with the way it was edited, you looked like you were just slaying on those drums. So, tell me what you were doing for preparation for that? Have you always played?

Miles Teller: I’ve played for like 10 years, I got a kit when I was like 15. Never played jazz before and then just kinda started taking some lessons, took like lessons for a few weeks, like four hours a day, four times a week.

Obviously some of the stuff you were playing was like off the charts and some of the best drumming, do you have a guy who is like subbing in and you were body doubled?

MT: I did, like I did do pretty much did all of it, you know what I mean? Like, there’s a couple of things, like the director would shoot some stuff for his hands. Like anything that’s like a real close up is probably not me. But, a lot of that is just me crushing it.

Another film that you were great in was The Spectacular Now, and now you’re doing another movie with Shailene Woodley. How is it working with her again and what’s your guys’ relationship?

MT: Yeah, man she’s great, I think she’s a really natural actress, she’s really easy to play off of, but this was easier, I mean in The Spectacular Now we’re like falling in love and I’m like breaking her heart and stuff, and in this movie I just beat her up.

So you get to get your hands on her in a different way in this movie? You wrestle her to the ground, etc.

MT: Yeah, definitely more violent.

So you’re a villain in this. This is obviously your first bad dude role, what was that like?

MT: Yeah, I mean obviously I wanted to make him likeable. That was a big part of it for me. It’s nice playing somebody where I didn’t have to make everyone laugh all the time.

The line for this movie is like, you know, “If you’re different, you’re dangerous…”

MT: You just turned around and read that off the poster.

Yeah, I did… but I’ve read the book like eight times.

MT: Yeah, me too…

What makes you dangerous, what makes you a badass?

MT: I think the mind. I just think if you outsmart somebody. You gotta be a couple steps ahead of the next person. If you’re in control you’re pretty relaxed in the situation. So I’d say relaxation is key.

What got you into acting in the first place?

MT: I did some plays when I was a little kid. And then, I just played sports and played in some bands in stuff. In high school we got a pretty hot drama teacher, so then I was very into drama. One day my best friend who drove me home everyday said “we should audition for this play” and then I got into it for the last two years of high school. And then I went to NYU and spent a lot of money.

You went like right from your senior year to being in the movies, yeah?

MT: Senior year of college. The first movie I booked was this movie called Rabbit Hole, and so I did that. I booked that like two weeks before I graduated.

In a lot of your movies – Rabbit Hole, The Spectacular Now, even Whiplash – you’re always a character who’s involved in a car crash.

MT: Yeah and in real life I was in a car crash.

Is that a little too surreal for you, do people typecast you for those kind of roles?

MT: I don’t think I get cast as a guy who gets into car accidents, I’m just taking all those roles right? It is weird though, it is a theme in my career so far.

That and alcoholism.

MT: So you said you went down to Sundance? Did you get a chance to see any movies down there?

Yeah, I saw about twenty movies. Did you get a chance to see anything?

MT: I didn’t get a chance to see anything. I got to meet Phillip Seymour Hoffman, that was the coolest thing.

You shot 21 & Over here in Washington, over at UW. What did you think of that?

MT: I dug it man, we shot in August, there wasn’t that many kids around. When you’re walking arouatt:nd in a tube sock and there’s like Summer Session going on. It was cool, man, the Square is like Hogwarts, it’s very nice looking.

What did you think of NYU and what kind of advice would you give to young aspiring actors out there?

MT: Yeah, I really loved it. I think, whatever is good for you go for it. I think New York does propel you forward, it is a city where you can’t really just stay stagnant. People are always doing stuff and it inspires you to create. Also, I just think it’s the best city in the world.

Is that where you’re living now?

MT: No, I live in LA now, because that’s where all the things happen at. There’s a lot of TV in New York though.

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Out in Theaters: THE MUPPETS: MOST WANTED

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“The Muppets: Most Wanted”
Directed Sean Bobin
Starring Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell, Tina Fey, Steve Whitmire, Eric Jacobson, Dave Goelz
Adventure, Comedy, Crime
112 Mins
PG 

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From the first musical number, The Muppets: Most Wanted admits what it’s up to. “We’re doing a sequel,” the beloved Jim Henson puppets croak and caw, “that’s what we do in Hollywood. Though everyone knows that a sequel’s never quite as good.” And even though Kermit might be spot on with his sentiment, starting things off with this kind of disclaimer doesn’t offer a ton of hope to an expecting audience. Following that mantra of mediocrity, director and writer James Bobin offers up a Muppets that’s fully tolerable but never exceptional.

Three years ago, the return of The Muppets was met with near universal praise. Its release marked a childhood mainstay returning to the spotlight. Co-written by and starring Jason Segel, The Muppets used his signature blend of awkward comedy and surprising heart to harness a comeback for the cherished characters born of the 70s. Its ‘getting the band back together’ framework excited nostalgia for older audiences while ushering in a new generation of Muppet fans, reminding us why we fell in love with the Muppets in the first place. All Most Wanted does is remind us that not every Muppet outing was gold, nor really worth getting excited for.

After the events of the first film, the finally banded together again Muppets see that the wave of success they might have expected is not in order after all. The general response they’re met with is more a brand of 21st century apathy.  So when Dominic Badguy (the obvious red herring is supposed to be funny but I think you can make that judgement for yourself) offers to launch the Muppets on a world tour, the group of fuzzy dolls are ecstatic. All but Kermit that is. As the levelheaded leader of the gang, Kermit sees shortcuts for what they are and urges the group that they need to rehearse and improve their act before unleashing on an unprecedented world tour.

Meanwhile, Kermit lookalike and criminal master-frog, Constantine, breaks free from the inhospitable Siberian Gulag (you know, those forced labor camps that were so popular in Stalin’s USSR) and makes his way across Europe to the touring Muppets. Set up by Badguy, Kermit is tricked into an back alley (populated by dirty bath water and the babucha-clad impoverished that feels straight from a Vittorio De Sica film) where Constantine pulls a devilish switch-a-roo. By gluing a Monroe-like mole onto Kermit’s amphibian cheek and covering his own with green makeup, Constantine assumes Kermit’s identity and leads everyone to believe that Kermit is in fact the famed outlaw. What follows is a trail of bad accents, calamitous Muppet acts and a string of increasingly news-worthy heists.

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As Badguy (pronounced Bad-gee), Ricky Gervais is on par with his resume of safe comedies, offering a few chuckles but nothing that originates from the depths of the belly. Ty Burrell, continuing a streak of big screen appearances, gets to try on his best Pink Panther impression as the pretentious, mustache-twirling French detective Jean Pierre Napoleon. He’s at the mercy of the writers but at least with their mockery of French culture, they’ve honed their satire, even if it feels a bit too much like personal jabs.  

Locked up in the Gulag with Kermit, Tina Fey sports a hammy Russian accent to not so great effect. Like the onslaught of celebrity cameos around her (from Lady Gaga to Danny Trejo), Fey is fine but nothing to write home about. With every human character relegated to a riff on some European populace or other, and when the caricatures feel this mocking, Most Wanted feels like it’s flirting a dangerous line of xenophobic. But then again, we are dealing with puppets so I expect international audiences may be more forgiving.

Most Wanted is ostensibly ironic but feels the pressure of a hurried studio’s pace, particularly in the story department. Its international heist plot is exhaustingly familiar fare and Bobbitts offers little in terms of breaking free of genre constraints. Instead, it’s all very procedural, very much what you would expect. Nevertheless, Kermit remains one of America’s greatest and most timeless creations; a beacon of reason, an icon of good. A little green Gandhi that the world could always use more of. Too bad then that we spend so much time with the imposter frog, Constantine, a character who ironically seems to sum up the pursuit of the film at large – a knock-off ringleader leading a shortcut effort to make off with a satchel of money.

Its predecessor had the savory flavors of a labor of love, this the stink of a cash grab. Like salt water, you can taste the thirst for profits in the air. Nothing sums it up better than Miss Piggy’s verse in that first tune, “The studio considers us a buyable franchise.” It’s just a shame that that’s all they saw in this.

C

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SXSW Review: FORT TILDEN

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“Fort Tilden”
Directed by Sarah Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers
Starring Bridey Elliott, Clare McNulty, Neil Casey, Becky Yamamoto, Desireé Nash, Peter Vack, Jeffrey Scaperrotta
Comedy
95 Mins
United States

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Remember when tying your shoes was an impossible chore? When you could only get places at the discretion of your mom’s minivan? When you didn’t know how to cook yourself a meal so you relied on someone else’s feeding hand so that you wouldn’t starve? These, among others, are lessons that Fort Tilden‘s anti-heroines never seemed to learn.

As helpless as they are hapless, twenty-sometihngs Allie and Harper are two Brooklyn tweethearts utterly incapable of caring for themselves or others. Something as simple as meeting new friends at the eponymous Fort Tilden, a hip hideaway on a nearby New York beach, becomes an endeavor the equivalent of trekking to Mordor. Fort Tilden is their weekend Everest. Their prize a pair of swinging dicks to add notches in their paramour belts. How hard can going to the beach be? In this case, damn near impossible. From bikes to cabs, walking to hitching, this five-ish mile trek might as well be uphill both ways through six vertical feet of snow in the middle of a moonless night.  

Unfit for a seemingly painless journey such as this, watching this odd couple mess their way through the “rough” spots of the city is co-writers and directors Sarah Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers’ condemnation of an incomptent age of the e-tarded. Destitude without their iPhones, never able to look three steps into their futures and wholly lost without an aiding stranger, Allie and Harper are the bane of the millenials.

In their wake, a trail of broken hearts, pissed off acquaintances, abandoned responsibilities and poorly made iced coffees. Hansel and Gretel left a trail of bread crumbs to follow home, Allie and Harper could follow the bitter glances and stink of disapproval back to their hipster homestead. Completely unaware of how their selfish acts of careless bravado effect the world around them, they are all but reprehensible in their ever waking action. Smug, apathetic, careless, rude; throw all the negative descriptors you want at these two and it’ll probably stick but, through all of it, they’re honest. At least Harper (Bridey Elliott) is. She’s a heartless bitch but she knows herself. She fully commits to her many, many shortcomings even at the cost of others derision and scorn. At least being honest to oneself is an admirable trait, right?

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In a bind, Harper phones up daddy in her whiniest, whittle baby girl voice, fishing for a direct deposit without ever mentioning the phrase “I need money”. She knows how to wrap people around her little finger and is downright uncomfortable in any relationship where that’s not the case. Even her best friend (though Harper’s too jaded to ever use that term) is measurably her puppet. Although Allie (Clare McNulty) at first seems the more sensitive and sensible of the two, upon getting to know her better, we learn she’s really no better than Harper. She just hasn’t quite committed to her sins in the same way.

Allie feigns sticking to her moral guns (refusing to abandon a borrowed bike, choosing to rescue discarded kittens, flirting around the point in conversations even where the only goal is clearly to benefit herself and Harper) but one ounce of Harper’s callous pressure is all her emotional fulcrum needs for Allie to throw up her hands in defeat. Though Harper is a devoted misanthrope, Allie’s resistance to such makes her the more interesting one.

As the devilish duo, McNulty and Elliot share outstanding chemistry. They’re two sides of one coin, two faces of the same clueless Janus. Their desperation is pathetic, their ineptide a welcome mat for easy laughs but the two performers never pass along an ounce of judgement for their down in the dumps characters, giving them humanity that they might otherwise lack. Their straight-faced comic dynamics look born from years of working with each other so it comes as a bit of a surprise that both these breakout actresses only met during auditions. The success of Fort Tilden rests squarely on their capable shoulders and even through the thick layer of their disagreeableness, they’re fascinating characters through and through.

Cinematographer Brian Lannin makes good use of the rustic settings and concrete jungles, sun blasting the scenes when needed, adding an extra layer of disorientation and distress to the affairs. The snappy, ruthless screenplay  works best when Allie and Harper fail at the most benign tasks but never betrays Bliss and Rogers affinity for their love-to-hate-em characters. And this is part and parcel of what makes Tilden pop.

B

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Sarah Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers Talk FORT TILDEN

by Posted in Interviews, Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , ,

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After winning the special jury award for Best Narrative Feature, Fort Tilden saw a little bit of backlash from the critical public, many of them unconvinced that it was necessarily a deserving winner. But this can be expected of a noncommittal culture, more suited to complaining after the fact than making a decision. But this is neither here nor there (although I personally rather enjoyed the film) and the decision can be chalked up to the fact that a committee of only three are responsible for selecting the winners for any given category.

Regardless of this odd rocking of the boat that Fort Tilden has ushered, it’s a wonderful picture of big city ineptitude. From our review,

“Unfit for a seemingly painless journey such as this, watching this odd couple mess their way through the “rough” spots of the city is co-writers and directors Sarah Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers’ condemnation of an incomptent age of the e-tarded. Destitude without their iPhones, never able to look three steps into their futures and wholly lost without an aiding stranger, Allie and Harper are the bane of the millenials.”

Fort Tilden is at its core an absurdist, girls running amuck in NYC dramedy and is the product of directorial duo Sarah Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers. Here to talk about millennials, discovering the actresses and getting naked at the beach, read on to see how Tilden came to be.

 

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Can you talk a little bit about how you collaborate? How do you divide up all of the duties?

Sarah-Violet Bliss: There isn’t much division of our responsibilities. We sat at the computer next to each other writing all day. It wasn’t one of those, you write five pages and then show it to your partner. You have your every day, nine to five, writing jobs, and on the side, two people with the same thoughts, and also some different thoughts that would collaborate in a way that gave the film a voice of its own.

Charles Rogers: I don’t think it would have been possible to co-direct, without having co-written. I think the process was inseparable. In that way, we both knew what the vision for the film was, even though we might have had a different angle on it, they were angles that would inevitably come together. We both were always on the same page. Otherwise, I don’t know what it would have looked like.

Had you worked together before?

SVB: No. This was our first collaboration.

CR: We’ve been friends, but this was our first collaboration. Nine months ago, we didn’t even know necessarily that we were going to be making this film. We had the idea at the very beginning of the summer, and we wrote it in six weeks, and we produced in that amount of time.

I loved it. Obviously, you guys won, so it’s a great film. I laughed through the whole thing. You guys are older than millennials so how did you get in touch with your qualities of millenials? What do you think they are and how do you represent them?

SVB: I’m technically Generation-Y, but I think I’m friends with millenials. There’s a blend. I’m kind of on the cusp, so I feel like it wasn’t too hard to tap into that.

CR: A lot of it was stuff that we were thinking about in our own issues. Our own issues ended up working their way into the film and that’s sort of what’s hard in the writing process, if you know that going in to it or not. Also, just drawing from friends and people that we knew. We have a lot of friends who do absurd things and I guess there’s a particular kind of absurdity that comes with the millennial generation. That wasn’t hard to draw from, when it’s all around you.

Tell me a little about the production in New York. It looks great. Were you just stealing shots? What kind of channels did you go through and were there any challenges or tricks?

SVB: We tried to permit as much as possible. We had our things covered for a lot of it and then there were a lot of things that we had to steal. There’s always a lot of great stuff to put in front of the camera but that also comes with a lot of challenges.

CR: We met so many characters along the way. The type of people who would come up to me, they were always very specific to the kind of neighborhood that you were in. So the girls go on a journey from home and we sort of also went on a journey. There’s just a lot of different kinds of neighborhoods and every day was a different flavor because of that.

I was just wondering about the two actresses. Were they a comedy team?

SVB: They had never met before we cast them. Ally, the blonde, is one of my best friends from college and she’s been in a lot of my short films and we work together a lot. We discovered Bridy Eliot, who plays Harper, and we took them to dinner when she was in town and it was really good chemistry. We all really got along. They worked phenomenally together and hopefully they continue to. This was their first collab.

When you say you “discovered her,” how did you discover her?

CR: She was concussed on the side of the road and… Bridy Eliot is a comedian and performer in the Upright Citizens Brigade. It’s a major comedy theater in New York. She has a presence in the comedy world but she hasn’t really been in a lot of films. This is both their sort of break out role. It was great to find out on the first day that we cast right. We knew it going into it, because we felt, but when you’re on set there’s that first day where you’re nervous. Getting to see them perform on the first day was like, “We don’t have to worry about this!”

Do you guys want to talk a little bit about your background before you came to this film?

SVB: We both went to NYU grad film school together. We’re still there. That’s where I’ve been making my shorts, through film school. Before that, I was a theater major at Oberlin, which is where I met Claire. I’ve been writing plays and stuff for a really long time. After I graduated, I was actually more interested in film. I became more of a filmmaker than a playwright.

CR: I went to college here and then I went to grad school at NYU. I’m not from New York necessarily. I do a lot of comedy and improv and standup in New York, which is cool because I want to do a lot of comedy and I get to know a lot of the talent pool in New York. I feel like it’s nice when you can see all of your worlds coming together. I feel like this film did that for me.

What were the themes that were most important to you about this idea of challenging friendship or friendships that indicate more about the challenges that you have yourself with your actual relationship that you have with the other person? Were there certain ideas that you hoped would carry throughout the film?

CR: We were drawing from different life experiences. I think one part of the millennial generation – the idea of this age – is that you get to this point in your life where you start to evaluate all of your friendships. Before this point, your friendships are out of convenience or commonalities that are more trivial. And the older you get, you begin to sort of focus in on what’s important to you and what actually matters to you. You begin to realize that the people you thought mattered to you, there’s issues there. Before this age, I don’t think that you necessarily evaluate those things. I was drawing from some difficult relationships that I had, but also there were people that I love, and don’t want out of my life. All relationships are really hard.

SVB: The themes are stuff that we really discovered while writing and developing what we were writing originally. We thought it would be a funny idea to have two characters who were trying to get to Fort Tilden, except their not really good at stuff. As we were writing, we really discovered more of what was actually very compelling to us and about what it means to be 25 right now… and how the older generations, the parents of these millenials, feel like, “Oh you can be whatever you want to be.” And not really thinking about their responsibilities and pursuing that in a really hardworking way, just expecting that it’s going to happen. You get taken by surprise, when you realize that you’ve got to take some control over that.

Sounds like you might know some of these people.

SVB: Sure.

CR: Yeah.

You keep bringing up the comedic elements of this, but there was also a lot of drama to this story. Did it start out as a comedy and then you kind of found these dramatic beats? Or did it start out as more of a drama but then developed into a comedy?

SVB: The original idea we had was: “This is a funny idea.” All the work that I’ve done in my past at least – Charles too – there’s always some more dramatic depth to it. That’s what I think makes the comedy better and the drama better. They are opposites that flatter each other. Really it was just about making something truthful and making the story richer. We never were like, “This is a COMEDY.” It develops into what it develops into. That’s my favorite kind of work to create.

CR: I think the fact that it started with characters, rather than an idea about the tone or the genre, I think it got both funnier and sadder. I don’t think it necessarily started out as one or the other. The more we understood the comedy, the more we understood how that related to drama. I think that the fact that it gets sadder makes it funnier and the fact that it gets funnier makes it sadder. These characters, ultimately, are very flawed. The comedy comes from that, but also the struggle has to come from that too. So I think it sort of started in a simple place, then everything layered outside of that.

I love that they all had their tops off at the beach. I wondered who’s idea that was, or if they actually do that out there.

CR: It’s an unmonitored beach, so a lot of people do end up taking their tops off.

SVB: Knowing that that’s a place where people go to be cool and free or whatever, and then the idea that someone would be put in that situation and feel uncomfortable by feeling like that’s the cool decision to do.

CR: Our actresses were very comfortable with the toplessness. Everything was consensual.

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SXSW Review: ARLO AND JULIE

by Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

“Arlo and Julie”
Directed by Steve Mimms
Starring Alex Dobrenko, Ashley Spillers, Sam Eidson, Chris Doubek, Mallory Culbert, Hugo Vargas-Zesati 
Comedy
United States

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Anyone who’s ever put a jigsaw puzzle together before understands the acute stages of puzzle insanity. At first, it’s an exciting endeavor, like diving into a new George R.R. Martin tome or deciding that you’re gonna start hitting the gym again. After about twenty minutes of turning over white pieces, you already feel the first tinge of frustration, that beading realization of what you’ve just committed to. Finally, you’ve put together the exterior, that beautiful border to encapsulate all, fencing in that headless herd of jigsaw madness. Cue feelings of adequacy, and perhaps even ecstasy. Then comes the middle bits, the monotony of a sea of monochromatic shades, so unanimously uniform that you may as well piece them together blindfolded. Eventually, parties become frustrated, tensions rise and deep-seated issues simmer up between you and your in-it-to-win-it puzzle partner. Maybe you shout, cry, give it all up. Maybe even a table gets flipped. But what happens when a puzzle gets so out of control that it takes over your life? That’s exactly the question Steve Mimms asks in Arlo and Julie.

The answer? Well if you’re Arlo and Julie, you allow the obsession to take the helm, survive only on the sustenance of delivery pizza, let your career and relationships all but descend into shambles and pace in front of the parcel box waiting for the mailman like a dog for its master. “Mail?” you may ask. Well this cryptic puzzle – a triptych of muted oranges, reds and yellows – randomly starts showing up in the mail, arriving in increasingly larger sealed packets from Mexico. At first one piece is enclosed, then two, four, eight, sixteen and on and on until Arlo and Julie are faced with thousands of little cardboard zigs and zags and dozens of man hours needed to put it all together.

As the puzzle outgrows their cozy dining room table, secrets within their relationship come to light with both eventually wondering how well they know the other party. At first, their puzzly plight is admirable and Mimms’ uncertain direction leaves the floor open for what could be a vast highway of possibilities. Suspenseful elements slip in under the radar, adding a touch of foreboding to the otherwise squarely indie film proceedings. While we wade in the darkness wondering what all these little pieces will eventually add up to, it’s the two titular characters who must keep us entertained, and by the end are the only real components that make it worthwhile.

Julie, played by a geeky chic Ashley Spillers, is defiantly bohemian, perhaps so much so that she doesn’t even know it. Her smooshy facial expressions, shaggy bob and frumpy natural beauty all help to make her relatable. Her gorging on pizza makes her lovable. Spillers plays her well, offering a character you’d expect from an 80s Woody Allen flick with some real depth behind her quirk. Her partner Arlo (Alex Dobrenko) is a bit of a misanthropic dweeb. His mind always in the past (he’s writing what he believes is the great untold biography of Ulysses S. Grant), he’s got the inflated ego to fit his aspiring writer hat but it also makes him a bit of a challenge to really assimilate with. He’s a bit of a flippant kook, his conflated ideas of relevancy definitively hipster. Arlo is a guy you can only take in small doses but beneath his moppy-headed think box is a manchild who’s a bit mystified with the world at large, who treats love like a bit of a puzzle itself.

Cute and quaint, Arlo and Julie might be one of the better second-tier Woody Allen movies that Woody Allen never made. It’s mumblecore deadpan meets Austin angst, big city stressing in the near desert. The dialogue culled from a workshop on the neurotic and maladjusted, everything always feels an arm length from reality. The first two acts throw in enough quirk to keep the adventure light enough and often engaging. With some coincidentally staged entrances and exits, the screenplay seems cooked up by a career playwright. The staged contrivances kind of work but aren’t consistent enough to really sell the stage as a whole.

Undoubtedly the biggest problem that Mimms runs into is that he only gets limited mileage out of the quirky mystery aspects of the piece. By the third act, the tank is running on empty, all the lingering questions have been abandoned or shoddily answered and the film sputters towards a conclusion that’s slight and saccharine, even if it does fit the mood.

C+

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SXSW Review: SPACE STATION 76

by Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Space Station 76”
Directed by Jack Plotnick
Starring Patrick Wilson, Liv Tyler, Matt Bomer, Marisa Coughlan, Jerry O’Connell, Kylie Rogers
Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi
93 Mins
United States

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The 1970s were an age of looking towards the stars. From Star Wars to Star Trek, it was a decade of endless possibilities, a time that saw instant dinners, laser weaponry and hovercrafts around every corner. It witnessed the culmination of the space race, the end of the Vietnam War, and the birth of a new unchartered epoch in the suburban trenches of Americana. Mimicking the uneasy blend of conservatism and forward-looking gung-ho-manship that defined the generation, with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, Jack Plotnick has made Space Station 76 a soapy space opera; a smartly satirical smoothie of 70s manifest destiny – ripe with the impractical hopes of intergalactic expansionism – cut with the tedium of suburban ennui.

At the forefront of this final frontier are an unlikely cast of characters, each representative of the many uncertainties and insecurities of the era. There’s the boredom weary housewife, Misty (Marisa Coughlan), who spends her days slurping down Prosacs, “programing” the crew’s meal du jour, and occasionally sleeping around with Steve (Jerry O’Connell). When she’s not confessing her feelings to the on-board robotic psychiatrist, Dr. Bot – whose toy-sized presence and pre-programed wisdoms are always accompanied by fits of laughter – she mopes and gossips. An icon of post-50s feminine guile, her boozy, unscrupulous mannerisms are as sardonically iconic as her down-on-his-luck everyman husband, Ted, played by Matt Bomer.

Having never quite caught a break, and now sporting a clunky robotic arm – a perfectly retro-futuristic brand of low-budget prop – Ted is haunted by his lack of accomplishments, caught in a cycle of self-destructive lethargy lead by his penchant for illegal horticulture and unsure of his place in the world (er, universe). His emotional arc reflects the pathos of those who nervously straddled The Draft, haunted by the withering courage of a fresh faced soldier never to see a day in combat. He’s shaken but for all the wrong reasons.

Enter new co-pilot Jessica (Liv Tyler) who is at her core representative of the shifting winds of the feminism movement, a firmly competent and confident substitute for a traditionally male role. Striking up an affectionate relationship with Ted’s daughter Sunshine (Kylie Rogers, who looks adorable in a nerdtastic pair of specs,) long-gone sparks of tenderness begin to rekindle the purpose in Ted’s life.

Jessica’s maternal instincts juxtaposed against her inhospitable womb is an example of the tragic irony that Plotnick hits on again and again, to such great effect. But it’s Patrick Wilson, who plays Captain Glenn with startling sensitivity, that is the most outstanding of the bunch and the pinnacle of Plotnick’s satirical heights. As the gruff but gay commander, Glenn’s sexuality is a thing of great shame, something he keeps deeply closeted. Glenn’s stern persona is encapsulated in Wilson’s patriarchal mustache, a metaphorical affront to shield others from the shame he buries, a mask to disguise his bleeding soul. The arrival of Jessica, who doggedly seeks the true reason behind Glenn’s last co-pilot (and secret lover’s) sudden reassignment, sets him on a crash course with his own inner demons…and some asteroids.

The stocky sets, “pew pew” sound design and clunky CGI – that look like crafted on a circa 1976 computer – are as kitschy as they come but the human relationships they serve to frame always feel universal and timeless. Through satire, Plotnick has stumbled upon some brave new world. Bold and esoteric, he’s shown that one doesn’t need to look at the future from behind the jaded lens of an iPhone 5, that things may well be all the more interesting if we rewind the clock and only then begin to look forward.

B

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Talking with Jack Plotnick of SPACE STATION 76

by Posted in Interviews, Uncategorized Tagged , , ,

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“Never give up, never surrender,” Alan Rickman famously peeped out in Galaxy Quest. “Live long and prosper,” the wise Spock gently reinforced. “The force is with you,” Ol’ Ben loved to chime in every now and then. But it’s the iconic words of a toy, “To infinity and beyond,” that have come to describe the sci-fi space explorer mantra: that there are no limitations, no furthest reaches. But what if you were content just floating around space? Not conquering anything, not plotting any universe-saving diplomatic truces, not battling off malevolent, oddly-shaped aliens? That’s the question Jack Plotnik asks in his endlessly funny Space Station 76 and the results are blisteringly good.

 

Though always quick with a joke, Plotnik’s film works so well because it seeks to understand rather than mock its motley crew of characters. From our review,

“At the forefront of this final frontier are an unlikely cast of characters, each representative of the many uncertainties and insecurities of the era. There’s the boredom weary housewife, Misty, who spends her days slurping down Prosacs, her down-on-his-luck everyman husband, Ted, new co-pilot Jessica who is at her core representative of the shifting winds of the feminism movement, and Captain Glenn (played by Patrick Wilson with startling sensitivity), the pinnacle of Plotnik’s satirical heights.”

Jack sat down to talk about the appeal of the 70s, the indefiniteness of space, the process of writing as a team, the challenges of making a low budget sci-fi flick, and whether he could ever reasonably see Space Station 76 as a TV program.

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I think the most burning question here is where did this idea come from?

Jack Plotnik: To set a movie in the future, but imagined from the 70’s? Is that what you mean?

Yeah. The concept is wonderful but it’s so wacky. How did you cook it up?

JP: I came up with this idea. It was about eight years ago. I had wanted to write a play that would explore what it was like to grow up in the 70’s in the suburbs. I just thought it would be more interesting way to go about it, to set it in this future that we dreamed of that was never actually realized. It symbolized, for a lot of people, what it was like to grow up at that time where you thought things were going to be a certain way and they didn’t quite turn out that way. I’ve always been obsessed with this 70’s future. My family went to Disney World in the 70’s and I rode the monorail. I just thought, “We’re going to be on Moon colonies soon.” Everything was possible in the 70’s. Of course, now looking back, my parents divorced in the 80’s and I can see now the trials and tribulations they had in the suburbs. You look back and see things didn’t quite turn out the way you expected.

This film also seems like it would work really well as a series. What made you decide on the format of a feature film?

JP: Well it’s really easy to say, “Why don’t you do a series?” It’s actually really tough to get a show on the air. If you don’t have experience as a show runner, what tends to happen is you sell your ideas to somebody who has already created a TV show and then they run it. This was a very specific story that I wanted to tell, a very personal one. A lot of what was in my life as a kid was in this movie. So I wanted to tell this particular story, however, before a movie I was thinking of a show and I would love that to happen. I’ve already been thinking about what adjustments I would have to make to have this be a TV show. I love that you said that.

In the film, there’s all these kind of absurd, goofball, ridiculous concepts going on, but they frame some really potent issues. What for you was the launching pad of for going, “We’re going to make this futuristic, sci-fi, low-brow comedy, but at the same time bury these important issues within it?”

JP: That’s the type of artist I am. I love mixing genres, because I think the human condition is: life is really hard but it’s also really funny. Life can be painful and sometimes people can be mean. To me, my favorite kind of comedy comes with a pinch of sadness or devastation. Some of my favorite artists, their movies are uncomfortable comedy. They’re comic drama. I always have had an appreciation for that. In terms of the heavy messages going on, I can’t help that I want things to also be funny. There were some things I wanted to say about the pain of growing up in that time in the suburbs. At the same time, I didn’t want it to be a straight up drama, because I’m a pretty silly guy and I like to laugh. This seemed like a fun way to explore that without being too heavy.

Patrick Wilson in this film is absolutely brilliant. His character is hysterical and heartbreaking at the same time.

JP: Now that you say that, I think that’s a nice way to put the movie.

What was writing his character like, for you personally?, He’s dealing with this issue of coming out and concealing his homosexuality and it’s clearly not acceptable at the time. What kind of statement did you want to make with his character?

JP: To me, sometimes it’s just a matter of just showing, and that’s all the statement you need to make. We’re sort of examining what it was and what that would be like, for people who don’t know what that’s like to see it and have some empathy. I co-wrote this film and a lot of Glenn’s work came from one writer, Sam Pancake, and he did a beautiful job. Glenn’s more suicidal tendencies came from me. I thought that would be an interesting way to deal with the very real pain that people go through with that kind of self-hatred. So the idea is that Glenn wants to kill himself but the ship won’t let him.

That’s hysterical but it’s also so real at the same time.

JP: Patrick Wilson is just so not this guy. He just walked on set with this, I think, iconic character I’ve never seen him play, yet I feel like this character has always been around. I’ve never seen a character quite like this, yet you feel like, “Oh I know this guy.” I love what he did with it.

Let’s talk more about the writers, because you just mentioned that you worked with a whole team of writers. There were five of you credited with the film. What was that writing process like? Why so many writers? In the future, would you go with such a collaborative effort again, or would you rather just focus on your own project?

JP: Well I love working with other people. I’m a collaborative writer. I co-wrote and directed the off Broadway musical, Disaster, that we hope to bring to Broadway later this year. I just like to do it that way. What happened was that I came up with the idea for Space Station 76 and I just jabbered around my favorite actors at the moment – funny, funny, smart people. For three months, I would direct them and through improv they created these characters. I would record the sessions, type them out, and then I would sort of sift through it and pick the best stuff. Then I would try to give that back to the actors. So the scenes grew out of improv. Then, in order to turn it into a movie, we needed to open up the world, and I added some characters, and did some more work on it. I love writing with other people and creating as a group. At the same time, it was very important that I also look at it from the big picture and keep the focus, so it’s one work of art and not five. I do think it’s all very much one voice coming through that film.

I definitely agree with you. It actually kind of surprised me when I saw so many writers on it, because typically you would think it would be more jarring, but no not at all.

JP: I think everybody understood what I was going for and I handpicked people who are smart and funny and have the same sense of humor as I do. They nailed it and I just love those guys.

Speaking of that sense of humor, my favorite character in the film is Dr. Bot. That was such a hysterical role.

JP: He’s a very small android. He’s a robot therapist who lead characters can see, but only Misty, the frustrated housewife, tends to go to him. I’m glad you liked him.

Totally. He’s the cult character to pull from the film. With Dr. Bot, was there any kind of statement that you were trying to make about the mental health community, or is this more just playing it straight for comedy?

JP: Everything in this film is commenting on a specific time and place of what it was like in the 70’s and what people were doing, what they were up to. There’s a few things going on with Dr. Bot. One of the big things about this film is it’s really about people who can’t connect, in general how hard it is these days to connect with one another. I just find it interesting that this character who is a frustrated housewife in the unhappy marriage, the only person she connects to in the film is this tiny robot. And to really connect with him, she ends up having to turn him off. One thing I love about him is that the sound effects were done by Denny Bird at Skywalker Sound. His father did the sounds for the original Star Wars movies. Denny did an amazing job. He added so much to this film. One of the things he did is he added a wonderful sound of Dr. Bot thinking. Whenever someone said something to him, you hear this looping sound. I believe it’s the sound of an old fashioned printer from the 70’s or 80’s. It’s so fun to watch Dr. Bot think and to see how his brain works.

This being your directorial debut, at least on the big screen, can you tell me about a couple things that were surprisingly hard that caught you off guard by how difficult they were? And then other things that you thought were going to be really hard but ended up being surprisingly easy.

JP: In terms of how hard it is to make a feature, my friend Richard Day who wrote and directed Girls will be Girls that I produced and starred in, he said, “Doing this film is going to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life.” And then, “You’re going to want to immediately do it again.” He said it’s going to miserable and horrible and everything is going to look like all is lost. There’s definitely those moments. Specifically, there are just so many moving pieces. I had a great team around me, amazing producers and the whole crew. Actually shooting went fairly smoothly. The hardest part, I would say, was pre-production, getting everything ready. We had to build a spaceship on a soundstage in the valley. But the actual shooting went incredibly smoothly and I think the thing that surprised me was how they come and they’re just ready to play, if you get the right actors. It was just amazing to watch them show up on set and do what they do. It was just facilitating it. Especially that little girl, the girl Kylie Rogers played, she is a genius. She was just the one-take wonder. She somehow knew what every scene was about and would really get it in never more than two takes. She astounded me. That was a real joy to discover her and we were lucky to find her.

She was lovely in the film. Obviously, you were under budgetary constraints, this being a little independent feature that you’re then doing in space, the CG is not astounding. Would you want it any other way, though? Would you rather have had big production values on the asteroids and space station, or do you feel like this was kind of perfectly suiting for what it was?

JP: Well I would have loved to have millions of dollars, yes. A film like this it’s not quite the tone people are used to. You come to a spaceship, you tend to think, “I’m either going to get a goofball comedy like Spaceballs or a space-adventure comedy like Galaxy Quest.” People don’t quite expect to see a science fiction movie about suburban life in space. Hopefully people get that. Sometimes the characters can be mean to each other. You can also laugh at it all. I personally love comedies that are uncomfortable, like the British Office. In terms of the budget, we had enough money and also the mother of invention is necessity. So it was always exciting when we didn’t actually have the millions of dollars to build what we wanted to build. It was exciting to find the other way to do it and we always were able to. I’m just proud of what my set designer pulled off and the costumes. There’s really nothing I would change. The sets are gorgeous. I’m really thrilled. I mean maybe with a little extra money we could have been 3-D.

Earlier you mentioned that when you made this film, someone told you that it would be the hardest thing you’ll ever do but you would want to get right back on that horse. Have you already started thinking about a new project?

JP: Absolutely. I have several things. My immediate plan is to direct my musical, Disaster!. You can read about it at Disastermusical.com if you want to see it in New York. The plan is to direct that on Broadway in the fall. So I’ve got to do that. But then, yeah, again I love that you said Space Station as a TV series because we have already kind of been thinking about that and talking about it. And there’s a couple film scripts that I’m working with other people on.

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Out in Theaters: THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

by Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Fiennes, Brody, Dafoe, Goldblum, Murray, Law, Swinton, Ronan, Norton, Keitel, Schwartzman, Seydoux, Wilson, Balaban, Amalric, Wilkinson. Wes Anderson‘s latest may have more big names working for it than ever before but their characters are more paper thin than they’ve been, more fizzle than tonic, more Frankenstein’s creations than humans. His company of regulars – joined by a vast scattering of newbies – are relegated to playing furniure-chomping bit roles, filling the shoes of cartoonish sketches, slinking in long shadows of characters. From Willem Dafoe‘s brutish, brass-knuckled Jopling to a caked-up and aged Tilda Swinton, gone are the brooding and calculated, flawed and angsty but always relatable characters of Wes yore. In their place, a series of dusty cardboard cutouts; fun but irrevocably inhuman. Read More

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SXSW Review: HONEYMOON

by Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

“Honeymoon”
Directed by Leigh Janiak
Starring Rose Leslie, Harry Treadaway, Ben Huber, Hanna Brown
Thriller, Horror, Sci-Fi
87 Mins
United States

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In 1954, Colliers Magazine published Jack Finney‘s sci-fi horror serial The Body Snatchers. Since then, this fire starter novella has led to a handful of direct film adaptations (the latest being Oliver Hirschbiegel‘s 2007 The Invasion starring Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman) and dozens of spinoffs (John Carpenter‘s The Thing for instance.) But even more importantly, Finney’s creation all but gave birth to a whole subsection of genre: the infamous body invasion flick. In the years since, many filmmakers have employed this humble little niche market as an elastic stage to claim veritable scares by peddling harrowing practical visual effects and unsettling character shifts (in the best of cases) or CG sight gags and the banal formula of a group’s numbers mysteriously thinning (in the worst of cases). Director and co-writer Leigh Janiak though sees the genre as a chance to explore change on a microscopic scale, to prod just how absolutely horrifying it would be to see the one you love most temporally drained from their own body. Let’s just say, it’s not nice.

With the very talented Rose Leslie (Ygritte from Game of Thrones) and Henry Callaway at her disposal, Janiak prohibits an immense talent for directing her actors into believable territory, even under such inconceivable circumstances. From the opening montage where we meet newlyweds Bea and Paul undergoing matrimonial traditions like cake fighting (even though they forewent a real cake for cinnamon buns) and recounting the events by which they met (bad Indian food, it’s always bad Indian food!) to Rose’s fleeting misguided attempts to protect her husband from her extraterrestrial transformation (“They’ll never find you down here”) and through all the bumping of uglies in between, Leslie and Callaway sell the show as genuine.

Even on the heels of the more outrageous elements, their steadfast performances point to a unshaken understanding of their character’s respective head spaces. For the genre, it’s an uncharacteristically committed pair of performances and with Janiak jamming her cameras right in the midst of their personal space, we feel like we’re right alongside them, an equal victim of some inexplicable emotional violation.  

That is really where the true horror of these kinds of body snatching stories lies. Worse yet than seeing someone shot by a laser beam or abducted by some ethereal blue beam, there’s something infinitely more jarring to standing witness to an individual’s personality being siphoned out of them. Janiak’s film engages this process in stages. After running into what seems like the only other two people living in a ten mile radius, couple Annie and Will (who Bea just so happened to share a summer love with in the way, way back of past childhood flirtations), Janiak presents a first taste of “off-ness”. Annie’s withdrawn, confuzzled and all around off. She’s stage one of a mental virus, the foreshadow of what’s to come.

Shortly after meeting them, Paul wakes in the middle of the night to find the spot in bed next to him abandoned and cold to the touch. With harebrained suspicions of infidelity, he charges from the house only to find Bea naked, disorientated and caked in mud. Upon bringing her inside, a patch of what appears to be bug bites around her crotchal region alarms him. It’s nothing to worry about, she pleads in unconvincing manner. Instead of slamming on the brakes and seeing whatever transformation to come take place overnight, Janiak picks at her plate like a sparrow to birdseed. Like a gas leak from the brainstem, Bea isn’t replaced outright so much as reborn one blink at a time, reinvented with each breathe drawn, re-imagined with every performance of normalcy.

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Watching Bea recite milestone events from her own life into the mirror mimics an earlier scene where she practices a speech to get out of engaging in post-marital carnal relations but in the space between, she’s become more drained – more a shell than the filling. She’s lost another chunk of “Bea.” It’s the hollow spaces between the words, the falsity of her gestures, the empty recitation of loving remarks that imbues Honeymoon with such an eerie tautness. Bea being such an unreliable character, we never know what’s coming next and right up to the very last moments, we never really get a grasp on how much “Bea” is left in Bea after all.

And though Honeymoon may take place at a cabin in the woods, the camp has been left at home. Janiak’s take is fatally humorless, devoutly sobering. Instead of harping on frights, she’s left us with a steamy atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a butter knife and serve it at as a wedding cake. Even the hollowed out bride and groom toppers wouldn’t be missing.  

As Bea and Paul’s deserted woodland homestead becomes an unwelcome chrysalis, we’re left with little more than the remains of an evaporating relationship. Like Bea’s special nightgown (though it’s more hoary than whory) that Paul finds in the woods after her disappearance, there’s chunks inexplicably missing, impossible to recover, chalked up to some pieceless puzzle. But even after everything, there’s still some inkling of connection left, some fleeting memory of what it means to care for each other.

Perhaps that’s her intent after all, to show us something beautiful only to take it away, leaving tatters and fragments of what it meant to be able to connect with someone, to tell them you love them and actually mean it. By the end, “Bea” is reduced to mumbling her twisted version of sweet nothings but I’m still not convinced that all is lost of the well-intending New York butterfly she once was. Even in her harrowing final act, there’s love or at least something masquerading as such.

B+

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