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Talking With Ross Partridge of LAMB

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One of the most interesting, complex films of SXSW 2015 to date is Ross Partridge‘s Lamb. With the film, Partridge subverts our psychological expectations, flipping a difficult concept on its head and bleeding it for all its unsettling, deep dramatic worth. From our review:

Not one to worry about getting too literal with their metaphors, Partridge frames the eponymous Lamb as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A predator preying upon the trust of an 11-year old, Lamb’s intentions are shape-shifting and piercingly hazy. On the one hand, Lamb seems like a man of good intent and could just be seizing the opportunity to shape the maturing innocence of a neglected child. In his own words, he just wants to show her something beautiful. On the other hand, ew. That sentence alone is enough to conjure up all the yucky sentiments of 45-on-11-year old action. We instinctually associate any relationship between a middle-aged male and a twig-framed girl with a very particular (read: vile) expectation. When he reaches out to brush hair out of her face, you cringe. Even if the gesture itself might be innocent. In Lamb‘s purgatory of good sense and bad taste, we never know exactly we should feel but that rarely stops us from feeling a whole damn lot. (Full review here)

I had the chance to sit down with Ross and really dive into the tender meat of Lamb. Though I would caution you to seek out the film and consume all its juiciness for yourself before diving too deep down our rabbit hole, this is still a fitting avenue to familiarize yourself with the man and his work.

 

 

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There’s so much going on here – it’s so complex. The material is so delicate, and so fragile, that the slightest miscalculation in performance or directorial choice would have really made this house of crumble.

RP: Yeah, for sure.

How do you approach the tone, in each and every scene? How did you make it out of this balancing act?

RP: I think, early on we knew the challenges of it. I knew that I had to be patient, and I had to allow myself the truth of each scene, and not worry about appeasing. Not try to think about what’s entertaining,. It wasn’t going to try and be, certainly, seducing in any way. Really, my whole goal with it was to not get in the way of the story from the beginning. I read this book, and I adapted it, and I was like, “If I can just not put an imprint on it in a way where you can feel my involvement,” which is obviously so big, as a director and a writer and an actor. But I just wanted to tell the story as simply, and as quietly, as possible so that people can feel it on their own. I wanted to make it as intimate as possible. Tone wise, it was just a process. I was always trying to think about other characters, and my character, as subtly as possible. To take my performance levels down and not try and push anything.

It’s funny that you say that you want to get out of the way of the material, because in a sense, that is the approach, but on the other hand, without the finesse that you bring to the directorial chair, this whole thing just falls apart. Because you directed it, you wrote it, you starred in it, how much of a mindfuck is taking on all of these roles on this one project, especially on a project that is, as I said, as fragile and delicate as this is?

RP: I sometimes don’t know but I think that’s the key. There’s very few experiences you have as an actor, and as a director, or just being in this business in any rung, that is blind faith. And you read something, you read a piece of material where, for the first time in my life, when I read this, I had no fear. At all. I contemplated how it would land with people but my desire to want to do this, and take this risk, were so strong. That had never happened to me. I’m not that kind of person. I don’t make decisions very quickly, except for on this, when I was directing. It all became very clear, and it was very certain all the time. So I think sometimes you just have to give up to that. In life, sometimes there’s things you give up to. There’s an instinct that you’re supposed to be doing exactly what you’re doing, right in this moment. I just kind of held on to it, to try and make it and to try and keep clear of that.

So both yourself and Oona are just phenomenal in the film, and so much of the movie rides on these performances. She blew me away!

RP: Can we talk about her forever?

Can we?

RP: For real.

I know that she won a Tony, and she was nominated for a Grammy at 10 years old. Is that basically where you found her?

RP: Yeah. The casting director was never like, “You have to meet this person; she won a Tony and was nominated for a Grammy.” The casting director – Alison Esher – she’s from New York, she’s known me for years. We have a great relationship. In the pursuit of casting this, we knew that if we didn’t have the right Tommy, we would never do it.

Oh, totally! It falls apart.

RP: So it’s like, “Okay, let’s start the process.” Alison, early on, said it wouldn’t be that difficult. “What do you mean, it’s not that difficult.” You hear about people searching for years. She said, ‘It’s not going to be that hard. There’s only about five girls who actually, probably can do this role. And you’ll know.” I think that makes me feel better – I’m not sure. We saw a lot of girls, and there were a few that I walked into the room, and I met Oona, and as soon as I walked in, she had these little glasses on, she was kind of in her own little world. She was like, “Hi, how are you?” Just was non-phased about everything. I just looked at her, and she was this young girl who was so much an individual, and confident in who she is, and was so unique an individual at 11-years old. It’s infectious.

So, at some point did you kind of sit her down and go, “Look, this is a really delicate role, and we’re playing with some really culturally touchy issues”? Was that a conversation you had with her parents, or with her, and how did that go?

RP: I felt like I was going to have to have that conversation, and that was a worry of mine, but it never happened, in the sense that it didn’t have to happen. Oona, we don’t give enough credit to kids, and how intelligent they can be. She got this right away. She totally got this. And there were other families who, the parents of other kids, who understood the compassion and the empathy we were trying to go after. I thought I was going to have to do the sales job, and really talk to them about why I was doing this, and what my intentions were. Oona’s mother had read the script, she was in Chicago – one of her other daughters was working on a movie – and Oona wasn’t going to audition because she was so busy. She was in school – she could have done after-school stuff. She could have cared less. Her mom read the script, and called her husband, and said, “You have to get Oona to this audition. She has to play this part.” I met them as we were considering – we sat and had lunch. We talked about everything other than that, because they were like, “We get this. And she gets this. We would be so thrilled to have her on this, and she gets exactly what it’s about. She really wants to do this.” The irony is that we cast her, and two days later, she got a call from Harvey Weinstein, who basically offered her the lead in Anton Fuqua’s movie ‘Southpaw’ that’s coming out with Jake Gyllenhaal. And there was actually a moment where our schedule… where we thought we might lose her. But Oona’s like, “I’m doing both movies. I’m not not doing them.”..The performance is just phenomenal. As I mentioned in my review, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her pick up a Supporting Actress nomination, even though she’s very much a lead here.

RP: Anything that comes her way, I think, is well deserved. We were constantly.impressed. On day two, we shot the end of the movie – the last scene in the movie, which is such an emotionally charged end. Her second take, even the boom operator was crying. We were all crying. You could hear people being emotional and we were like, “This is something so rare to see.”

On day two?

RP: On day two. From that moment, everyone was just so supportive, and knew there was something special in this girl, in this performance, and in this story. It was a real collective effort. Everyone from my producers Nell Eslen, who really took charge of this whole thing. Jenn, and Taylor Williams, who has the balls to fund a movie like this. I can’t give enough credit to someone like him, who says, “You know what? I see this. I want to be a part of something like this. It’s different. It’s unique. How many opportunities do you get to do that?”

We’re giving a lot of credit to Oona, as we should, but her performance really pivots on yours. And you are just so perfectly disorienting in the role. There’s just scene after scene where I’m literally just standing on the edge of my seat, biting my nails, like, “Oh God, he’s reaching out to touch her. Don’t do anything weird! Please don’t do anything weird.” You play that so perfectly. There’s just this fine line that you’re riding and threading the needle so carefully. For you, from a performance perspective, is this something you could define as a pinnacle in your career?

RP: I don’t really have any control over that. I know it was a huge opportunity when I read it. I was like, “Wow, this is such a complex character.” The main reason I wanted to play it so badly was not, “Oh, this is going to be an amazing career thing.” It’s just that I knew that in order to tell this story, the intimacy the actor would have to have with girl would be so monumental. I don’t think I could have translated that while working with another actor, while having the energy, and the dichotomy between that. I had to make sure it was right and that’s just one more step in making sure that those two actors actually get along, and that I have the trust between them. It was like instead of having a straight line, it would have been a triangle. And, ultimately, when playing the character, all the other stuff, the fine line and the tension that were there, I had to trust that all of that stuff would take care of itself, and that I always had to come at the character from a place of love. And that every action and everything that he did and said was really genuine, and for the best intentions, and for the best reasons. Sometimes that’s the way human beings are – I think they come from a place of goodness. The nurturing gets caught in the way of that.

And you don’t know where to direct that love in many circumstances. I think one of the many interesting dichotomies of the film is just what audiences bring to the film, our abject biases, right? You see a young girl and a forty-five year old guy traveling cross country, alarms are going off all over the place. In most every case, as they rightfully should. For how culturally unacceptable this relationship is, there is a thing of beauty and grace to it. Talk about what that is.

RP: I obviously agree with you. I think there is. We can go to movies all the time, and we can make moral judgements on less things, or we don’t make moral judgements on other things. People spend fifteen dollars and watch people mindlessly kill one another. And then all of a sudden, this becomes a huge thing. THAT becomes entertainment to us. Nobody questions that anymore, at all. And so, I find it ironic when people are so pissed and up in arms about this. It’s like, these are human emotions, and people are frail and people make mistakes. And yet, where does our empathy lie, and how far will we go? And how will we actually cure the ills of our past or the ills of our future, if we can’t find a little more empathy in the world, and try and really understand, instead of immediately judging. To watch people just kill each other, I don’t go to those movies because I just get nothing out of them. That’s where we are, as a society. That’s become okay but a relationship that’s built on complexity, and you can’t really define what it is, that is less easy to see. People want to say, “He’s a monster,” or “He’s disgusting.” It’s not there. People want it to be. It’s like a Rorscach test.

And that’s where this movie thrives. It’s these expectations… you saddle up to them, you look over the edge, but you never cross that precipice, and that’s what makes it so fascinating and so interesting.

RP: Yeah. People have mostly agreed. We were testing it all along. It’s exciting that people are seeing the movie the way you’ve seen in. The story within is actually far more satiating than the confines of our own judgements, at this point. People are excited to be questioned, and they’re excited to feel something they can’t idenitfy. That becomes a new experience. Hopefully, it’s worthwhile.

And that, again, is another reason why this film is such a breath of fresh air. It takes you in these directions that you don’t anticipate and that comes down to the source material. I haven’t read the book, but I plan to – I’m so intrigued, and I’m so compelled to read it now. Can you talk about it. I read in the press notes that you were immediately like, “This has to be turned into a movie.” But what was that thought process and the process of it becoming a film and also some challenges that you didn’t anticipate?

RP: Right. Well, when I read the book, I immediately knew that I wanted to make the film. The rights weren’t available – a very well-known actor had the rights before me, and he was trying to develop it before me.

Really? Can you say who?

RP: He’s one of my favorites. I love him as an actor, too. Kyle Chandler had the movie rights. I think it’s okay to say. He was so busy, and he and his wife were going to team up on how to do this thing, but his schedule got crazy. He and the author are still friends, and it was a real honor to have him there. I just wanted to make it, and the challenges of it were the poetry of it. The language of David Lamb is what I wanted to hold on to as much as possible, because I felt that the heightened language he spoke in was so reminiscent of his heightened belief in who he can become. Somebody other than himself, somebody completely otherworldly, because he’s so stuck in this banal world of bleakness. He wants to believe in something better and more beautiful. Keeping that language was going to be tricky. I said this before; the first two-thirds of the movie made sense to me, in the book, but the ending, the climax of this film is a very psychological climax. It’s not action based, it’s more of an emotional peak. So, how do I make that as intriguing as possible? Ultimately, it was a feeling of relief, obviously. That would be climactic enough, keeping the tension and the stress of trying to figure this out. And then, finally, we start releasing. We give it in a way that offers some hope, in a very strange way. All the things that you want to think this person is, he doesn’t turn out to be. You don’t get that feeling, “Oh, I knew he’s going to do this.” Actually, you get just the opposite. You have to question everything about this character, because he’s just the opposite.

It’s funny that you mention the third act, and this idea of release, because, for me, I felt like until the very last frame of the movie, I didn’t let out a breath of air. Because you’re still so much on edge, even until that very final moment! Even then, fade to black, and you just have to process it. It was a film that I sat there for 10 minutes afterwards, dissecting in my head how I felt about it. That’s an unfortunately rare experience in this industry – where you actually have to think after a movie.

RP: There’s a moment in the credits, where’s there an extended period of black, before the first credits come up. The credit is the directing credit. It wasn’t like I wanted to keep it in black the whole time, but I felt like I didn’t want to put names on the screen right away. I felt like people would really be effected, hopefully, and wanted to give it as much time as we possibly could, where they could just be a little bit neutral for a little while, listening to this beautiful song by Angel Olson, a spectactual song. It was almost like, if you could just sneak the credits in, on the side, people are not going to be in the frame of mind to just start reading credits.

Also, going off the end of it, one thing I couldn’t stop think about was, what are the implifications and the ramifications of the events in this film? I just wonder where is she five years down the line? Where is he, ten years down the line? Is this something that crossed your mind?

RP: Oh, of course. Actually, the last day of rehearsal with Oona, we rehearsed together for about a week in New York – my last question to her, before we actually would have seen each other later in Wyoming, was, “I just want to know what you think.” The characters dropped off in the end, and you say goodbye. Where do you go? And she literally, without a beat, said, “I go home, and I tell my parents that I ran away for a while. And then I go into my room. I probably take a shower. And then I go about my life.” And I’m like, “Do you tell anybody what happened?” And she says, “No. Because he gave me something that I think is going to be a gift. It’s going to help me.” So that was the hope. To hear it from an 11-year old girl, at the time that we’re making the movie, that that’s how she assessed it, I was like, “If an 11 year old can understand this so clearly, then hopefully everyone else can.”

Then there’s hope for the rest of the world.

RP: You would think. My character, I believe, this is the one opportunity to make a lasting imprint on something, on somebody, before his demise. I’m not so hopeful for Lamb, I’m not so hopeful for his outcome. I know that there’s a moment in it, for him, like he always does – that’s he’s so conflicted about it, like he’s this awful person or beast, but yet, he’ll smile, once or twice, in memory of what she gave him, and what he gave her, and maybe that might make some sort of difference in his life, if it continues, at all.

That’s one of the things that’s interesting about Lamb as a character, is his acute awareness of who their situation could be interpreted, and you see that played out in so many moments, particularly in the moment when the girlfriend…

RP: Lydia.

Yes, arrives in a cab. And you’re like, “Oh no! This is going to be a disaster!” And it kind of is a disaster. That’s another thing where I’m like, “What happens there? What does she do with that information?” But I think, for him, there is a semblance of a spiritual rejuvenation, in his ability to give his love away, in a very pure, almost non-reciprocating way. He’s not doing it to gain something, necessarily.

RP: I don’t think he’s capable of gaining. I think that he wishes he was capable of gaining love he could have received; from his dad; from his mother, who split…

From his wife…

RP: From his wife. From his younger brother. Here’s a guy who’s just so damaged. It’s just too painful when someone says to him, “I want to love you. I want to care for you.” He doesn’t think that he deserves it and he’s probably very angry, and he doesn’t understand how he’s capable of being loved. And if people put that on him, he doesn’t respect them. “Why would they want to do that?” That’s not the right thing. It’s really sad.  There’s a part of the movie, that’s always one of my favorite parts, when he’s out with Tommie, and he’s talking with her while his girlfriend is there, and he says, “Do you promise me that you will always call me Gary?” Which is not his name, which is the person he would do anything to be, to be anybody other than who he is. That’s really hard – it’s heartbreaking.

I guess, kind of in conclusion here, where are you headed to next? Are you planning on directing another feature?

RP: Yeah. We just literally finished, so I’m planning on doing another feature, sooner rather than later.

Behind the camera?

RP: Behind the camera. The next one, I’m not sure I’ll be acting in. I don’t feel the necessity to be acting in all of the movies. And, in fact, one of my favorite experiences on this shoot was when I just got to direct, with Scoot and Mary and Lindsay Pulsipher and other people who are in scenes. That will be, definitely, the trajectory – to find another great piece of material, whether I write something or not. We’ll be touring this around for some time, I’m sure.

Where are you headed to next?

RP: We’re not sure. We have a few festivals that are reaching out, and we’re just kind of still just here at the premiere stage. We’re hoping to get it in as many places as possible.

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SXSW Review: TURBO KID

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This is the future. Bicycles remain the only mode of transport and they scream down rubble road decorated with human skulls, past junk yards littered with bits and bobs of discarded robots and towards the odd outskirts ripe for plundering. The land is overrun with masked miscreants of a steam-punk Road Warrior meets Jason Voorhees variety picking through the remains of a scrapyard Earth. The leader of the bicycled clan, a nefarious crime boss known as Zeus (Michael Ironside), has concocted a way to transform humans into water – now the world’s most precious resource. This is 1997.

Everyone in Turbo Kid looks like the ’80s puked on them. From the cheap rubber suits to a barrel of throwback practical effects, Turbo Kid aims to be the product of a past generation. “We always wanted Turbo Kid to be like some lost crazy kids movie from an alternate 1980s that’s somehow has just been rediscovered,” says directing team Anouk Whissell, François Simard & Yoann-Karl Whissell (a.k.a. The RKSS Collective). They note that their film was inspired by the landscapes of The Road Warrior, the splatter-happy gore of Braindead, the cheeky cheese of Cherry 2000 and the costumery and, uh, bikes of BMX Bandits and their affinity for such palpably dated material couldn’t have been translated to the screen in brighter streaks. A blu-ray release would be injustice. Turbo Kid was made for VHS.

In this decadently dated film, a young mop of brown curls known only as “The Kid”, played by Munro Chambers, is a loner forced to live a life of restless solitude in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. He kicks in in his underground scrap-metal hovel, dividing his time between hunting for a new water source and making trips to the trading post to barter the odd ROTC for a ration of increasingly tainted agua. When his path – oft drawn on maps with crayon – crosses with an eccentric and impossibly bright-eyed lass called Apple (Laurence Laboeuf), the Kid must embark on a hero’s quest to save what is left from the scourge of the one-eyed Zeus.

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From A to Z, Turbo Kid aims to capitalize on a deep-rooted nostalgia for a bygone era. RKSS attempt to corner the “so bad, it’s good” market and make the sci-fi equivalent of fantasy’s The Princess Bride. The characters are little more than cheesy riffs, chewing scenery to the point of choking on it while the plot is hardly designed in such a way that it warrants being repeated. But like The Princess Bride before it, Turbo Kid zips from one campy chortle to the next, leaving little time for you to pick at all its many seams. And like its production design that showcases sharp primary colors standing out against drab backdrops, Turbo Kid stands out from the field when it’s willing to turn the violence levels to turbo. 

Those familiar with the ABCs of Death may find themselves in the loving arms of déjà vu as Turbo Kid itself is an expanded segment of the anthology’s “T is for Turbo”. Much of the same “heavy-spray” practical effects are employed here but they’re ratcheted up to a wonderfully tasteless degree. Heads are cracked in two, appendages soar and bodies literally pile up on one another.

In fact, Turbo Kid features so much practical effects-driven gore that on any given day, the crew included a “stunt team, a blood team, a prosthetics team and a doctor.” Though eye-poppingly fun in those big set pieces, Turbo Kid fails to really engage on any level beyond camp and nostalgia. For this particular case though, that’s almost all I needed.

C+

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SXSW Review: BONE IN THE THROAT

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You can tell a lot about a person by the way they eat. Greedy bites or delicate tastes reveal a person’s inner slobbishness or sophistication; tt’s a testament to their character; a litmus test of their social graces. In Bone in the Throat – a delectably violent adaptation of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain‘s crime/foodie novel of the same name – people also reveal themselves with their utensils.

Ronnie the Rug foregoes the traditional forks and knives routine and stuffs his gullet with meaty, messy and often bloody fingers. His coat pockets are usually lined with halibut or mackerel, leaving behind a distinctly fishy odor in the rooms he vacates. Police chief Sullivan (John Hannah) takes measured, deliberate bites of his white bread sandwiches. Like him, they don’t even appear to be condimented. Sous chef and Ronnie’s nephew Will Reeves (Ed Westwick) is oft seen operating finely-carved rosewood chopsticks or a delicate appetizer utensil, dining on artful and exquisite cuisine. In Bone in the Throat, food reveals lifestyle, modus operandi and, more often than not, the ability to employ nuance. By the end, it can even be employed as a weapon.

In the rough and tumble whirlwind of Bourdain’s Bone in the Throat, the cutthroat world of high class cuisine meets the literal cutthroat world of the East End London mob. Caught in the middle is Will, an aspiring executive chef with family ties to the mafia. When Uncle Ronnie and Skinny execute a would-be informer in Will’s workplace and force him to help cover it up, Will is pressured to keep his gills shut or swim with the fishes.

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Andy Nyman as the love-to-hate-him Ronnie is one of those juicy, larger-than-life cockney mobsters thrashing and crashing their way through environs that fail to contain them. With a gnomish mutton chop of a face, he’s Ray Liotta meets Peter Pettigrew with the social courtesies of Tommy DeVito. Watching him chew and chomp through the scenery is one of the great joys of the film and one that keeps it humming with nervous energy and dark intrigue.

What and how a person eats may tell a story but newcomer Graham Henman is there to capitalize on that often untold tale in surprisingly blood-stained fashion. He crams his camera uncomfortably close to gnashing teeth and gulping tongues, giving us a too-close-for-comfort mug of people’s most bacterial-filled innards before exposing us to scenes of chilling extremity. In the corners of the screens, characters distort and lose focus (was there an aspect ratio issue in my screening or was this intentionally?) as Arctic Monkeys blare their doomed post-rock ballads. Before long, everyone is dead or in jail. It’s a righteous experience even when tripping over its shoelaces.

Existing somewhere in the undiscovered ether between Snatch, Good Fellas and Master Chef, Henman’s Bone in the Throat is a brutal crowd-pleaser that’s destined to be a delicious score for those who can’t decide between the Food Network and FX.

B

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SXSW Review: WILD HORSES

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The proof-of-concept for Wild Horses is in the pudding: Robert Duvall in front of and behind the camera, festival “it” boy James Franco and once teenage heart-throb Josh Hartnett saddled at his side. Even though Duvall hasn’t directed a film since 2003’s widely panned Assassin Tango (what. a. terrible. name.) there is promise in the idea of the diverse trio hidden beneath cowboy brims mugging through difficult family dynamics. Duvall, Franco and Hartnet aptly square off but there is just so much wrong with Wild Horses that it’s hard to overlook its bumbling, clueless ways.

In the opening moments of the film, Duvall discovers his youngest son (Franco) in the arms of the Spanish stable boy and threatens them both at gunpoint. There’s mumbling and grumbling to such a degree that I wasn’t sure whether Duvall’s character was supposed to be senile – he’s not – and soon he fires two shots from his handgun – the fire time, the barrel doesn’t even register a visible flare but a shooting noise rattles through the room. Inattention to detail like this abounds in Wild Horses. In a real d-bag, deep-Texas, sternly backwards move, Duvall threatens his son at gunpoint, effectively booting his candy ass from the ranch once and for all.  

The film picks up 15 years later when a “lady sheriff” (Luciana Duvall) is assigned a cold case involving the disappearance of the aforementioned stable boy. Turns out that he was wiped from the face of the earth following Duvall’s barnyard discovery. How coincidental. Before long, Ms. Lady Sheriff comes sniffing ’round ol’ man Duvall’s ranch asking nosy questions like, “Do you know what happened to that boy that was buggering your son that you banished?” Rather than sift through a convincingly maze-like web of mystery, Wild Horses keeps the “who killed the stable boy?” card in its back pocket until the final scene of the movie. It’s excruciating getting to the end because by the time we’re only quarter of the way there, we think we know that Duvall did it and don’t really care either way.

Admittedly, there are some fine performances from Duvall and Franco, particularly when the two face each other down and attempt to reconcile their broken relationship, but the script is so poorly written that you are left wondering why Franco even signed on in the first place. I’m nearly convinced he only took the role so he would play a gay character.

In my interview with him, Robert Duvall admitted that the first draft of the script was “fucking terrible”. I don’t know what happened between that iteration and this but it’s hard to imagine something even more messy, poorly written and almost entirely fake feeling than Duvall’s final edit of the material. To make matters worse, Duvall cast his younger, much more Argentinian wife in the lead role of “Lady Sheriff” and she is all but incompetent in the part. She can barely hack her way through her lines but tasked with taking on a Texan accent, she flubs and fumbles her way into a full-blown cinematic safety. She chokes worse than the Seahawks on the one-yard line.

From a directing standpoint, Duvall is almost incapable of framing an interesting shot. It feels more like he planted the camera in an arbitrary position, yelled “Action”, did the scene and rolled the print. There is no indication of forethought, visual complexity or composition. When mounted on a horse looking down on the outcast son, Duvall doesn’t even take advantage of the natural opportunity to frame himself looming large in the corner of our line of sight, lording over his once rejected offspring, meant to look small and unfocused.

No, every shot is the product of a camera somewhere for no reason telling a story that does need to be told, but not by the people assembled here. The tale of a father and son – particularly a conservative, Texan one – trying to sort through what it means to have a gay son/have a father that believes that being gay is “evil” is one rich with dramatic potential. To see it so egregiously executed and sufficiently botched as it is here is borderline painful.

D

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SXSW Review: MANSON FAMILY VACATION

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From Lina Phillips’ ticks – his quick-burst nervous laughter after nearly everything he mutters, the awkward, uncomfortable way he holds himself, his unsettling obsession with Charles Manson – we know something’s off. The journey is uncovering what and the platform is J. DavisManson Family Vacation – a dark family drama that knots itself up in misunderstandings and a trembling desire to be accepted. It’s eerily funny, smartly performed and more twisty than you would expect for an independent film.

Produced by the Duplass Brothers, Manson Family Vacation stars Jay Duplass (the skinny, dark-haired older sibling of indie prince Mark) as Nick, a man who believes he has it all figured out. He’s got the white picket fence, the loving, supportive wife (Leonora Pitts) and a child with a recent penchant for off-colored drawings. When Nick’s shleppy artist brother Conrad (Phillips) arrives on his doorstep – or rather under his bed, bearing a knife – Nick is confronted with the harsh reality that maybe he and his recently deceased pops weren’t always the gentlest of family members to the adopted, eccentric Connie.

Well into his 40s, Conrad is a black sheep, still struggling with the weight of “childhood stuff.” Having just quit his job and sold all his belongings, he asks Nick to take him on a tour of the Manson hot spots (a distressingly comic bit plays out at the LaBianca house) because he thought it would be a “nice thing for them to do together.” When I’m out with my brother, we usually get some oysters and local brews but the dynamic between Conrad and Nick is one of deep-seated discomfort.

Nick is visibly shaken by his brother’s recent predilections of all things Manson while Conrad fails to see just why his older brother – he who is supposed to protect and shepherd him – won’t even attempt to get outside of his comfort zone to appease this one particular ask. The chemistry between Phillips’ and Duplass is an icy hot pack – at one moment, they’re on the same page playing the buddy-buddy role and another, they’re at each other’s throats so diametrically opposed that they can’t even grasp how in the hell the other one could think the way that they do.

A larger theme of open-mindedness and acceptance comes into play when Nick agrees to drive Conrad to his new “job” at an “environmental organization” and things begin to trend sketchy. When Tobin Bell enters the picture, the unease escalates palpably. As the film barrels towards a totally unexpected conclusion, Davis succeeds at winning our investment and our empathy, brewing up a sense of understanding that challenges the rational human mind.

Davis drafted the script from seeds of his own life. At a young age, he found a copy of “Helter Skelter” – his grandfather was a police chief and had snatched it up quick – and grew a mounting fascination with everything Manson. Real life friend Jay Duplass had trouble understanding and accepting Davis’ unusual fixation and much of the character dispositions was born of their true-to-life failure to see eye-to-eye on the matter. As the underlying notions of nature vs. nuture and genetics come to head in the third act, Davis makes way for a surprisngly tender examination of family. Who we are and where we come from acutely informs character motivations in Manson in such a way that you might not anticipate as you’re going through it but will be able to make sense of once it’s all said and done.

For a low-fi indie movie, there are some great things at play – strong performances, an enticing script, mounting suspense, a huge payoff – even though some of the trappings of small budgets features don’t escape Manson Family Vacation‘s grasp. Cinematography from Sean McElwee seems sloppily lit – some indoors shots are especially second-rate – giving the film a kind of home video look at times. Infrequent, scuzzy technical issues aside, J. Davis’ film is a product of an era and a fascination that rings true to the outcast mentality. The only problem is now I have an undying wish to watch Charles Manson watch this movie.

B

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SXSW Review: SPY

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Like Funyuns, Melissa McCarthy is an acquired taste. In her least delicate projects, she vaults around the frame, sharting and cursing to the apparent delight of squealing audiences that I just don’t relate to. Even in Paul Feig‘s Spy – a film that affords her at least an attempt at a three-dimensional character – a wide margin of the comedy is rooted in McCarthy’s heft and just how riotous it is to see a fat lady try to do normal lady things. Tee-hee.

As with McCarthy projects past, Spy projects a cipher of reality in which fantastical things transpire in the name of “comedy.” McCarthy attempts to mount a European motorbike but it flops over. In footage showing her spy academy training, she flips and rolls with the best of them before punching nuts like a cracked-up monkey. She even fails to glide over the roof of an automobile in a scene literally aped from Feig’s The Heat. It’s funny because she’s fat and little more. I wish there were more to it than that, but there’s not.

With Bridesmaids, The Heat and now Spy behind them and Ghostbusters on the horizon, Feig and McCarthy have cooked up some kind of unbreakable collaborative bond. Their partnership is odd to say the least – being betwixt an aged, three-piece wearing gentleman and a scuzzy, willing-to-do-anything plumpette – but like other talented individuals who have failed to see their way out of a faltering relationship (ahem, Johnny Depp and Tim Burton), Feig and McCarthy continue to be just the bee’s knees to one another. Feig’s gushing introduction of McCarthy at the SXSW premiere (“My favorite person in the world”) left little to doubt as to the kinship shared between the two. It’s all good to be BFFs but maybe a skosh of constructive criticism wouldn’t hurt.

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Consider the face-palming failure that was McCarthy’s long-gestated dream project (Tammy). With that in mind, I for one have serious doubts for McCarthy’s comic sensibilities and with what I’ve seen of her – from Identity Theft to Tammy – I just don’t see the comic star that some envision her as. It’s true that Feig once lead her to a (totally undeserved) Oscar nomination but maybe it’s time for this red sea to part ways. Because underneath the failures of Spy is evidence that both McCarthy and Feig have the ability to thrive, if only they could get out of each other’s way.

The film opens with an extremely on-the-nose James Bond tip-of-the-hat with agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law) tossing a well-populated mansion in search of a nuclear weapon. From a distance, McCarthy’s Susan Cooper provides tech support – altering Fine of incoming henchmen and advising him which rooms to duck into for cover. When Fine uncovers the big bad, he pulls a Vince Vega and accidentally turns the man’s brains to crimson mashed potatoes. For what it’s worth, the sequence is disarmingly cutesy and sinfully hilarious and it reminds one why Law was once considered to play James Bond.

Throughout the film, Feig’s actions sequences are surprisingly strong in their glossy execution but, unlike celebrated contemporary Edgar Wright, Feig doesn’t know really know how to pull off physical comedy on camera. Rather, his shots supposedly attain comedic effect because McCarthy’s too big to be pulling off the stunt or she pukes after she does them. While Wright uses clever visual cues, camera movements and framing to deliver a rare form of in-camera comedy, Feig’s films just throw in the kitchen sink, crams his camera in the space and lets it roll without a taste for subtlety or a mastery of his craft.

You likely wouldn’t believe me if I told you but the comic king of Spy comes in the shape of Jason Statham – an agent who talks a big game but lacks almost entirely in follow through. His lofty opinion of himself has him showering us with a list of prior accomplishments – “I was dead for five minutes one time,” “I once had my arm ripped completely off…and reattached it with my other arm,” etc. – and, surprising though it may be, he pulls off the deadpan bit with hearty aplomb.

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Miranda Hart, Allison Janney and Bobby Cannavale all bounce in and out of the picture at one point of another, providing very little in terms of actual comedy while Rose Byrne as an ice-cold vixen with an atom-bomb up for sale actually packs in a few nice laughs. A brief interlude with Zach Woods make me grin and showed that Feig was maybe even willing to challenge his status quo with a little gore but it’s a promise that stands unfulfilled. Over and over again, Feig returns to McCarthy and how she looks like a lonely cat lady, or a mini-van driving mom, or a coupon-clipper and ha, ha, look she’s trying to do something not totally lame! Let’s point the camera and laugh at her. Were I McCarthy, the oft mocking material would slice a chink in the ol’ self esteem armor and, personally, it’s hard to watch her knocked down again and again even if we know redemption is surely in the cards.

In large part due to smarmy secondary characters the likes of Law, Statham and Bryne, Spy does slip in some low laughs, sometimes even at the hands of McCarthy. And though I get the sense that this is supposed to be empowering – as if McCarthy score one for the girls when she doesn’t inevitably f*ck everything up – but, if we’re being honest, I don’t know if I buy it. As Melissa McCarthy and Miranda Hart celebrate their victory with a “girl’s night out”, the intention to pander towards female audiences is grossly obvious in what is essentially a reheated formula of the Feig/McCarthy machine that we’ve seen before. Having digested Spy, I feel as if I can forecast exactly what is in store for the all-female Ghostbusters; fat jokes, slightly funny improv comedy and female failures turned female success stories. And maybe a kitten sweatshirts or two for good measure.

C-

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SXSW Review: TRAINWRECK

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Take it from the effervescently crass mouth of Amy Schumer, “The title was always Trainwreck. Trainwreck or Cum Dumpster.” Oh Amy, you are such just so…you. From talk radio appearances to gross-out Twitter posts, the Schum has crafted her image on being unapologetically, oh-so-adorably crude and in the context of Trainwreck, it’s miraculous to take in. At last night’s premiere, when an audience member inundated her with compliments, she barked, “Stop trying to fuck me.” She has swiftly become the epitome of 21st century feminism-as-middle finger; the crème de la crème of vagina jokes and reverse slut shaming that will melt the lipstick off housewives and zap the calories off your finger sandwiches with her gloriously nasty one-liners and hysterically sexual non-sequiturs. Read More

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SXSW Review: FURIOUS 7

At the bedside of crisped brother Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), older, meaner Deckard (Jason Statham) vows revenge on the crew that turned his sibling into a pin cushion. The camera pulls back to reveal a high security hospital-turned-war zone and Statham slowly saunters past gunned-down guards, ravaged rooms and fizzling tech. The world pisses itself in the presence of Deckard – your appropriately chewy badass action movie baddie at the center of the latest Fast film. It’s a rightfully outrageous moment that aptly sums up Furious 7 in its complete and stupid glory; it’s so dumb, it’s so good. Read More

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SXSW Review: A WONDERFUL CLOUD

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Eugene Kotlyarenko
sets the cinematic stove to a low-broil in semi-autobiographical A Wonderful Cloud, a lackadaisical, off-kilter romp through a broken relationship in Los Angeles. The events – like the comedy – are low-key and faintly directional, though are predominantly characterized by an overwhelming essence of a half-committed shrug. The fact that Kotlyarenko and co-star Kate Lyn Sheil (The Heart Machine) both play versions of themselves – a semi-successful up-and-comer in the fashion world and a foot-dragging, clothes-flipping couch potato – and were actually former lovers gives an intriguing edge to Kotlyarenko’s mostly hands-off approach but it’s unfortunately rarely enough to light up the screen.

A Wonderful Cloud begins with the notably lo-fi footage of a now outdated iPhone crammed in the personal space of a noticeably younger Kotlyarenko and Sheil. Says Kotlyarenko, “It seemed like a perfect way to show the audience that we were once truly young and in love, before introducing them to our present day selves. By kicking it off in this way, we set the foundation that we’re not just random actors going through the motions of being a former couple, but actually have this real history, baggage, chemistry, etc.”

Sheil’s got some more light in her eyes and Kotlyarenko has about an extra Chia Pet’s worth of hair. They bicker about nothings. The gaze into space. It’s your average, uneventful but nonetheless preserved ex-GF video. The raw realism intends to cue us into the unprocessed approach Kotlyarenko pursues but, like watching someone else’s home videos, fails to engage us in their relationship nor communicate any great degree of specificity into their affairs. It could be anyone, anywhere. And here on the big screen, its inclusion seems borderline self-absorbed.

This won’t be the last time that Kotlyarenko reverts to long-lost footage of his and Sheil’s once fling and aside from providing proof that the two in fact copulated years ago, it distracts from the narrative in the here and now. Memories of yesteryear may hold value to those having experienced it, but for us uninitiated in the audience, it fails to muster up much excitement.

Sheil’s trip to Los Angeles is meant to be all business but when she reunites with Kotlyarenko, he desperately tries to impress her with prodigious taco trucks and chic after-hours clubs. They interact through and with technology, shooting selfies, skyping half-naked and disappearing into their online identities. What follows is a dry, irreverent dose of laid back comedy and a has-been romance that transforms into a fairly compelling platform for Kotlyarenko and Sheil’s back-and-forths.

Nothing involved is necessarily laugh out loud nor is A Wonderful Cloud a film that will necessarily get you thinking but Kotlyarenko undeniably succeeds in his ability to bear himself – with all his ugly parts, including his unceremonious weiner. Jealousy and childish rage populates his mind and he isn’t ashamed to let it all hang out. Though nothing resembling a must-see, A Wonderful Cloud is a exactly the kind of down-the-middle mumblecore fare that gave birth to the subgenre in the first place.

C-

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SXSW Review: LAMB

Director, screenwriter and star Ross Partridge unearths a ripe splintering of soul in the fragile, complex love story that is Lamb. Adapted from Bonnie Nadzam‘s sage but harrowing novel of redemption and temptation, Patridge repurposes the byzantine dynamic of Nadzam’s words to co-exist in the cinematic crossroads of nail-ruining suspense and earnest, didactic sentiments of humanity, all the while subtly wedging in thematic elements of Vladimir Nabokov’s will-they-or-won’t-they statutory misgivings. Read More