SXSW Review: CREEP

March 24, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Creep, Horror, Mark Duplass, Patrick Brice, Reviews, SXSW 1 Comment

“Creep”
Directed by Patrick Brice
Starring Patrick Brice, Mark Duplass
Comedy, Horror, Romance
82 Mins
United States

Mark Duplass has had quite a run in the fledgling stages of his career. From small roles in the likes of Oscar baity films, such as Zero Dark Thirty and, le sigh, Parkland, to larger roles in unsung indie hits Humpday and Safety Not Guaranteed, and simply as the reliably affable straight man, Pete, on The League, it’s easy to admit that Duplass has got range. He dips his toes in the pools of all different genres and mediums, working as an accomplished dramatic actor and solid comedian to boot. It’s then such a surprise that perhaps the greatest work he’s done is in a found little footage horror movie called Creep.

Captured in what has become the oh so familiar first person POV framework, Patrick Brice takes on dual responsibility as the film’s lead and director. He is our window into the events to unfold, a fluctuating moral guide through a stew of character grays. Brice is Aaron, a videographer gun-for-hire who responds to a mysterious Craigslist ad claiming it will take one day of his time and pay a cool grand. Up in the mountains, he meets a Joseph, a man with claims of imminent death, making a farewell video for his unborn son.

No matter how valiant his intentions sound on paper, Joseph (Duplass) is an unreliable character from the get go. From his startling first appearance to the unsavory wolf mask, ironically called Peach Fuzz, he keeps stuffed in his closet, he’s a hard guy to get a read on. But that’s half the fun. Throttling between waxing on his own mortality and jumping from behind a doorway to startle Patrick (and by extension us), one thing is for certain: Joseph’s a weird dude. He’s always quick on his toes to offer some soundbite explanation for his abnormal actions but his backstory is about as reliable and consistent as Heath Ledger‘s Joker.

Brice and Duplass love playing with the idea of the unreliable narrator as they fill the film with palpable moments of transitioning allegiances. There are times when Duplass feels like the titular creep, other times when it’s Brice. There’s even some fleeting moments where we turn the mirror on ourselves to see if we’re the ones prescribing oddness to an otherwise savory and sweet situation. Could there actually be nothing wrong at all (save our unsavory expectations?) What am I talking about, this is a movie called Creep, of course some creeping is bound to go down. And go down it does.

When a film backs itself into a corner like Creep does about sixty minutes in, it usually becomes increasingly reliant on familiar tropes. The fringes of possibility become a picket fence and the audience is able to pick off the thread count like floating sheep. There are only so many ways to wrap things up in a horror movie and we usually know which of those endings will transpire when we’ve got about thirty minutes to go. But when Creep seems like its reaches the last track, it smartly changes things up, transforming from what may have dissolved into an unsatisfying slasher into a whole new type of paranoid tension machine.

From his backlit framing to the long, empty, awkward silences that fill the air like smog, Brice plants all the seeds of doubt required to make his audience want to stand up and shout “Don’t go in there!” at the screen. Thankfully, his characters are rarely dumb enough to go the way of the slasher victim. It may not subvert the horror genre, but at least it doesn’t sink down to its level. And though Brice does his fair share of leaning on genre mainstays to milk some frights, he remains true to his characters throughout and they’re what made it interesting in the first place.

B-

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Weekly Review 43: LIVES, CRONOS, FAST, VALKYRIE, SOMEWHERE, BICYCLE, INEQUALITY

March 23, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged Bicycle Thieves, Cronos, Inequality for All, Reviews, Somewhere, The Fast and the Furious, The Lives of Others, Valkyrie, Weekly Review

They’ve been longer hiatuses from Weekly Review in the past but I admit that it’s been a while since I’ve posted about what I’ve been watching from home. Busy with SXSW and the many, many, many reviews to come pouring out of that, I honestly didn’t have a ton of time over the past month to watch much at home. There were a few here and there (accounted for in this list) but it wasn’t until this week that I really felt like I had much to talk about in the segment to follow. In addition to the films mentioned below, I also re-watched The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and my opinion on it hasn’t really changed since the first time I saw it, for better or for worse, and The Fly, which still continues to be one of my favorite horror movies and a shining example of why practical effects will always be scarier than anything CGI.

I dipped into the theater just once (to my relief, there were no press screenings all week) to catch up on a film that I missed whilst in Austin, Enemy, which Chris reviewed for the site. I absolutely loved it and it’s easily one of my favorite films of the entire year, especially if you only account for stuff in theaters and not just in the film fest circuit. I can’t get Enemy out of my head and that’s exactly the kind of movie I want to see more of.

In other news, I also decided I couldn’t wait and watched Nymphomaniac: Part 2 on VOD with a bottle of vino. Whether that was a good call or not, I can’t really say but look for a full review of that sometime next week. Other than that, I got into a bucket of classics, so take a trip down memory lane with me to visit a bunch of first time watches that have been lingering on my to watch list for far too long.

THE LIVES OF OTHER (2006)

Sitting high on IMDB’s top 250, Das Leben der Anderen takes a hard look at a frequently unexplored chapter of German facism. In the ideological cell of the eastern block, before sledgehammers were taken to the Berlin wall, Ulrich Muhe plays a government agent known for his no-nonsense enforcement of party-friendly ideology. Everything soon changes when he heads up an investigation into a local artist and begins to sympathize with what was once his opposition. It’s a moving and informative picture chalked with a fog-laden, almost nightmarish landscape and moral claustrophobia. Muhe is a revelation, putting forth a man swimming through the tumult of changing tides. As a character study and pseudo-biography both, The Lives of Others is not to be missed.

A-

CRONOS (1993)

Diving deeper into Guillermo del Toro‘s filmography, I found Cronos to be a wonderfully crafted little yarn that shows a different side of Toro. Working in elements of body horror and sci-fi iconography, this film feels more Cronenberg-esque than much of his later work: a contained picture of hubris, a tight story of man vs. mythos. Foreign film offers the chance to see frameworks that just wouldn’t fly on American soil so it’s nice to Toro flex that muscle. From having an older gentleman as the center piece – a true rarity for Hollywood genre flicks – to the mysterious scoops of mythology, this is classic new-age Spanish cinema.

B

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (2001)

I was always under the impression that I was not a big fan of the original installment in what was to become one of the biggest international franchises going. It was only until I actually popped the disc in (a DVD in all its low resolution glory) that I realized that I had actually never seen The Fast and the Furious. What I got was not quite what I expected (and boy has Paul Walker‘s Brian changed from the eager puppy he once was). And even though it shamelessly scammed on Point Break to an almost embarrassing point, it properly sets the thematic footing for the sequels to come. Family first baby, family first.

C+

VALKYRIE (2008)

Bryan Singer‘s foray into historical drama didn’t quite turn out as he imagined it. First of all, casting Tom Cruise as a one-handed, eye-patched German is a hard enough sell on on paper but works even less in execution. As an admittedly big fan of Cruise’s work, this is not the role for him and he sticks out like a sore thumb the whole way through. And that’s kinda the whole issue with the film on a larger scale. It seems strange that Singer, an American filmmaker, would helm such an apologetic project from a distinctly German lens. About a gaggle of high ranking German officials attempts to assassinate Hitler, Valkyrie feels like a story that ought to have been told from a German auteur, not some Hollywood showboater.

C-

SOMEWHERE (2010)

Sophia Coppola only makes movies about rich and famous people bored with being rich and famous. But none (not even Lost in Translation) hit the nerve of ennui as much as Somewhere. It’s a film that drains the sweet out of the sweet life, that makes fame look more like a curse than a gift. Ironically, it’s Coppola’s style of noncommittal narrative structure that makes Somewhere as good a movie as it is but also holds it back from being great. There’s style spilling over and Coppola’s use of long shots often transcend the boredom she’s trying to encapsulate, posing scenes that feel inescapably real and human. Elle Fanning offers a breakout role as Steven Dorff‘s young, independent daughter, showing up the seasoned actor at his own game of woes.

B

BICYCLE THIEVES (1948)

Vittorio De Sica‘s story of Post WWII poverty in Italy is asset rich with atmosphere and tone. It captures a time and a place with untempered clarity, offering a father and son relationship that may ring a touch uncouth in modern times but is unapologetically true to the epoch it represents. As much a tone poem about a devastated economy as it is a unblinking condemnation of the governing parties of the time, Bicycle Thieves deals enough moralistic gray zones to make for an intriguing watch.

B+

INEQUALITY FOR ALL (2013)

A smartly laid out indictment of the wealth disparity problem in the US, Inequality for All is as heartbreaking as it is informative. With former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich leading the charge, this is a must-see documentary that will confirm your worst fears about modern America. More terrifying than the scariest of horror films, Reich lays out a dire situation where the middle class lays victim to an ideological genoice. It’s An Inconvenienter Truth, Rich Dude Nation. It should not be missed by any American.

A

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Out in Theaters: NYMPHOMANIAC: PART 1

March 21, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Charlotte Gainsbourg, Christian Slater, Lars Von Trier, Nymphomaniac, Nymphomaniac: Part 1, Out in Theaters, Review, Shia LaBeouf, Stacy Martin, Stellan Skaarsgard, Uma Thurman

“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

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.

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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Out in Theaters: DIVERGENT

March 21, 2014 by Chris Bunker Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Divergent, Jai Courtney, Kate Winslet, Miles Teller, Neil Burger, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Shailene Woodley, Theo James

“Divergent”
Directed Neil Burger
Starring Shailene Woodley, Miles Teller, Kate Winslet, Jai Courtney, Theo James
Science-Fiction, Action
139 Mins
PG-13

Watching Divergent is like trying to figure out what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. You’re thrust a grab-bag of emotions ranging from awe to complete disbelief. Who made this thing? What terrible atrocity happened to these people? Why didn’t the technology work? Where the hell did everything go wrong? Did this really happen?

Divergent is the rare oddity where the trailer is more exciting than the movie ever gets. Director Neil Burger’s (Limitless) latest big-screen project is trapped in Act One purgatory. Somehow he never manages to make it to Act Two (forget about Act Three), while only fitting ten minutes of action into a nearly three-hour movie. Simultaneously the slowest and most pointless flick this year, it never seems to start or end. At 139 minutes in run-time, it’s about 130 minutes too long. Divergent takes longer to reach a climax than… well, you get it.

The film, based on Veronica Roth’s novel of the same, stars Shailene Woodley in her first foray into high-budget Hollywood film. Miles Teller, Jai Courtney, Theo James and Kate Winslet (!?) join her. Stealing elements from Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games and similar teen-fiction titles, Divergent gets old fast.

Based in a worn-down Chicago (somehow the last place on Earth), a “utopian” society is divided into five separate factions: Abnegation, for the selfless; Amity, for the peaceful; Candor, for the honest; Dauntless, for the brave; and Erudite, for the knowledgeable. Every year, 16-year olds must go through testing to determine which faction they should join. Of course, there’s a problem with this: sometimes kids can show competency in the characteristics of several factions, hence the eponymous “Divergent.”

“Abnegation” dresses like they’re in a prison camp, while their social responsibility is to feed the homeless—dubbed “Factionless”—and avoid all forms of comfort, including looking in the mirror—oh, how selfless! Since they’re considered the most altruistic, they also run the government… I won’t venture a joke at that one, it’s not even worth it.

“Dauntless” are gymnasts who spend their days sprinting everywhere, jumping on rooftops and giggling their asses off. They’re Chicago’s “police,” charged with defending the citizens and keeping order. Of course, they’re also the most diverse group. Let’s put it this way: you won’t see a black kid in Erudite. They look like the United Colors of Benetton teamed up with Nike to help the under-privileged. Supposedly, their fitness makes them fearless. Instead, they just look delirious.

Woodley, a Divergent, decides to join Dauntless, which is right about when this film loses all impetus. Similar to the Hunger Games, in order to join the faction, she has to beat out her competition by proving herself in various activities.This quickly turns Divergent into a futuristic Summer Camp for the fit and beautiful, complete with a ropes course; Capture the LED-Flag; team-building exercises; zip-lines through Chicago; and, you guessed it, Tag. I’m surprised they chose not to fit in a friendship bracelet workshop or a round of Duck Duck Grey Duck. Burger spends two full hours trying to entertain you by showing teens doing things you barely enjoyed doing yourself when you were younger. “Look how much fun they’re all having!”

To prove their mettle and fearlessness, Woodley and her pledge class of giddy recruits have to jump onto a train, then subsequently jump off. At one point, they compete in a five-minute paintball fight. They’re told to get tattoos to show their badassery. These feats of strength continue for about an hour and forty-five minutes. A love-story is also interspersed throughout, as camp-instructor Theo James and Woodley must overcome various obstacles in order to finally make out.

The only real conflict in this film involves whether Woodley will get kicked out of camp. We’re constantly submitted to idiotic recitations of the same bullshit, over and over. Again and again, she’s told: “You’re dauntless, so act dauntless or get kicked out.” My question: why would anyone choose to be part of this group of tattooed douchebags? I’d much rather live on the street, being fed by horribly clothed government workers than spend my days getting harassed by tatted-up jocks in leather windbreakers.

Her final initiation ritual before ultimately becoming one of these idiots involves submitting herself to some sort of virtual reality fear-machine where her fearlessness is tested. Phobias that she must overcome include sexual assault by James, death by killer crow, murdering her family, and drowning in a sealed glass case. She’s able to conquer these fears by telling herself “This isn’t real.” I wish.

Around two hours in, things finally ramp up. The last fifteen minutes are actually decent, dragged along by great acting from Woodley and the ever-spectacular Miles Teller. Everyone else slows them down, notably James, Jai Courtney, and Kate Winslet, who is in this movie for no apparent reason. She’s terrible.

Ultimately, Divergent is Hunger Games without the stakes, Twilight without the romance, Harry Potter without the magic. The Disney Channel-level acting and plot cramps you up like Hunger Pangs; this isn’t Katniss, it’s cat piss.

In the end, you leave Divergent telling yourself that this was just a dream; maybe you ate some bad shellfish and hallucinated the whole thing. You tell yourself, “this isn’t real,” hoping against all hope that it isn’t. Maybe Flight 370 never even existed. This is all a figment of your imagination, a cruel joke. Yeah, this week was just a wild nightmare. You click your heels together three times. This isn’t real… This isn’t real… This isn’t real…

Screams snap you out of it. You’re sitting next to a pre-pubescent girl’s volleyball team from the local middle school—they shriek every time Miles Teller is on-screen. Now it’s clear who this movie was made for, except this film calls for a different brand of ‘spike.’ You’ll have to down a few drinks to make it through this one.

D-

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Out in Theaters: ENEMY

March 21, 2014 by Chris Bunker Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Denis Villeneuve, Enemy, Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Sarah Gadon

“Enemy”
Directed Denis Villeneuve
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, Isabella Rossellini
Erotic Thriller
90 Mins
R

Doppelgangers have been contemplated endlessly in history. Shortly before he died, Abraham Lincoln wrote in his diary that he had dreamt an encounter with his doppelganger. It’s an eerie concept: two completely identical copies in the same dimension. Cloning isn’t natural, it’s dangerous, un-Godly. Dopplegangers bring out the evil inside.

“Chaos is order yet undeciphered,” flashes on the screen in deep yellow font. Enemy tricks and weaves, flowing its way through psyche until you’re left wondering what’s true and false, what’s real and what’s not.

Enemy is steganography in its purest form. Every twist and turn holds some truth within the winding web Director Denis Villeneuve spins. All is hidden in plain sight, or maybe it isn’t hidden at all.

The film is based on a Spanish novel, The Double, which looks into the life of a man who meets his exact replica, a man who can ruin his life. Jake Gyllenhaal is a history teacher at a university in Toronto. He lectures about time, about Mesopotamian empires. These empires use distractions to divert the masses, to entertain them and keep them at bay. History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

But the film doesn’t begin there. Another Jake Gyllenhaal walks through a dimly lit corridor, sliding a key into an austere door, revealing a strange underground club of ponderous-looking men. There’s a main stage. A pregnant woman masturbates in front of them. She orgasms. Gyllenhaal buries his face in his hands. He’s shocked.

Then, the main attraction. A woman walks out with a silver platter. She disrobes, pulls the lid off the silver plate. Out steps a tarantula crawling around the stage.

Gyllenhaal—the history teacher—he’s boring. We’re not sure who that just was at that Tarantula mess, but it definitely wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been. This man’s too clean-cut. His evenings are spent tangled in bed railing his girlfriend, falling asleep alone when she goes home. His days are spent delivering the same lecture, over and over again. History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

One day a colleague tells him to check out a movie. What movie? Any movie. Sure, why not? Not like he’s got much else to do.

Gyllenhaal rents a random film, pops it into his laptop. A deep organ sounds, the score eviscerating the scene, ripping the emotions out of you: there’s another Jake Gyllenhaal, an extra in the film dressed as a bellhop.

Enemy catches you quick, pinning you down, choking you to the edge of that last breath. Things cavalcade, piling on until the tension boils over. Contributing foremost is the sound design, which is monstrous, creeping and crawling like an eight-legged beast on your skin, making you shiver at the slightest touch. The organ tones, the elegiac score pulsate and drip their venom in your deepest corners. Daniel Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans spin a masterpiece, weaving you and garroting you until you turn blue.

Villeneuve is no stranger to quirky set design. Rooms in the film are eerily dressed, calling attention to the empty space as if there’s something lurking underneath, inside, everywhere. Every set piece has an uncanny quality. A bed with green sheets takes on the appearance of a murderer. For a film that relies so heavily on symbology to confuse and contort, Enemy’s set-work is a masterpiece.

Enemy has an incandescent glow to it, a yellow hue mixed in with the dark shadows. Villeneuve wipes his color pallet clean save a gelatinous yellow and a ghastly black. Walls ooze a chaotic nausea. This film uses color psychology to wreck your psyche, gnaw at you with anxiety on the brain. Every symbol, every color in Enemy is carefully thought out, fine-tuned to bring out the soul’s deepest fears and terrors. It’s a creepy brand of traumatic.

We mustn’t forget Jake Gyllenhaal, however, who here collaborates with Villeneuve again after their work on Prisoners. Gyllenhaal has two credits in Enemy, possibly more. He plays too men, completely identical yet separately unique. When they meet, their temperaments flash. One is aggressive, almost murderous; the other is terrified, squirmish. They pull up their shirts to reveal the same scar. Were they born on the same day? History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

What occurs as Enemy progresses is quaking, the earth below your feet seems to tremor faster and faster, moving its way up the Richter scale. A floating Tarantula as big as a Goodyear blimp slinks its way over Toronto. A woman’s body with a Tarantula’s head walks upside down through a corridor. At 90 minutes, it shrinks and expands the mind, then ends abruptly with no questions answered. Enemy is a rollercoaster personally designed by the Devil. Twist and turn, crash and burn.

Billed as an erotic psycho-thriller, Enemy is bare as “After Dark” on CineMax, but far more violently erotic. Naked bodies contort together, almost like two spiders dancing on a delicate web. Aggressive, deep thrusts and hollow moans add to the erogenous aura that swallows the theater whole. Villeneuve uses sex like a weapon, goring open the mind’s thoughts and bleeding them out like venom. Mélanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon are splendid in their supporting roles. They make writhing spine-tinglingly sexy.

I have never left a theater so thoroughly mind-wrecked. Gyllenhaal’s gritty performance combined with all the production elements that Villeneuve flaunts breaks this story open. They subject you to their hegemony then trap you in it. The story is captivating, corrosive. It scared the shit out of me then left me fallow. This is more mysterious than Memento, more intricate than Inception. Enemy is the movie you’re too afraid not to watch twice. It will take a while to decipher this psychosomatic chaos.

A-

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Talking with Miles Teller of DIVERGENT

March 20, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Interviews Tagged Divergent, Interview, Miles Teller, Premiere

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.

————————————————————————————————————————————

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: ENEMY

March 20, 2014 by Chris Bunker Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Denis Villeneuve, Enemy, Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Sarah Gadon

“Enemy”
Directed Denis Villeneuve
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Sarah Gadon, Isabella Rossellini
Erotic Thriller
90 Mins
R

“Chaos is order yet undeciphered,” flashes on the screen in deep yellow font. Enemy tricks and weaves, flowing its way through the psyche until you’re left wondering what’s true and false, what’s real and what’s not.

Enemy is steganography in its purest form. Every twist and turn holds some truth within the winding web director Denis Villeneuve spins. All is hidden in plain sight, or maybe it isn’t hidden at all.

Then, the main attraction. A woman walks out with a silver platter. She disrobes, pulls the lid off the silver plate. Out steps a tarantula crawling around the stage.

Gyllenhaal—the history teacher—he’s boring. We’re not sure who that just was at that Tarantula mess, but it definitely wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been. This man’s too clean-cut. He spends his evenings tangled in bed railing his girlfriend, falling asleep alone when she goes home. His days are spent delivering the same lecture, over and over again. History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

One day a colleague tells him to check out a movie made in the local scene. Sure, why not? Not like he’s got much else to do.

Gyllenhaal rents the film, pops it into his laptop. A deep organ sounds, the score eviscerating the scene, ripping the emotions out of you: there’s another Jake Gyllenhaal, an extra in the film dressed as a bellhop.

Villeneuve is no stranger to quirky set design. Rooms in the film are eerily dressed, calling attention to the empty space as if there’s something lurking underneath, inside, everywhere. Every set piece has an uncanny quality. A bed with green sheets takes on the appearance of a murderer. For a film that relies so heavily on symbology to confuse and contort, Enemy’s set-work is a masterpiece.

Enemy also has an incandescent glow to it, a yellow hue mixed in with the dark shadows. Villeneuve wipes his color pallet clean save a gelatinous yellow and a ghastly black. Walls ooze a chaotic nausea. This film uses the psychology of color to wreck your psyche, gnaw at you with anxiety on the brain. Every symbol, every color in Enemy is carefully thought out, fine-tuned to bring out the soul’s deepest fears and terrors. It’s a creepy brand of traumatic.

We mustn’t forget Jake Gyllenhaal, however, who here collaborates with Villeneuve again after their work on Prisoners (even though this was filmed before that). Gyllenhaal has two credits in Enemy, possibly more. He plays too men, completely identical yet separately unique. When they meet, their temperaments flash. One is aggressive, almost murderous; the other is terrified, squirmish. They pull up their shirts to reveal the same scar. Were they born on the same day? History repeats itself. Time is a flat circle.

A-

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Out in Theaters: THE MUPPETS: MOST WANTED

March 20, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Jim Henson, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Ricky Gervais, The Muppets: Most Wanted, Tina Fey, Ty Burrell

“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

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.

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

March 20, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Bridey Elliot, Charles Rogers, Clare McNulty, Fort Tilden, Jeffrey Scaperrotta, Neil Casey, Peter Vack, Reviews, Sarah Violet Bliss, SXSW, SXSW 2014

“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

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?

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

March 19, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Interviews, Uncategorized Tagged Charles Rogers, Fort Tilden, Interview, Q&A, Sarah Violet Bliss, SXSW, SXSW 2014

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.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

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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