(hoopla/VOD) I’m an easy laugher, and I also tear up easily. (Often both at the same time.) Really, I’m an emotional person in general, but that’s okay because alternative comedian Eugene Mirman is too.
The first half of IT STARTED AS A JOKE is a ’behind the curtain’ comedy documentary, showcasing the end of an era as Eugene Mirman wraps the 10th and last Eugene Mirman Comedy Festival. This last festival is a star-studded affair, but all of the prior ones were too (just a lot of folks didn’t know it at the time, including some of the performers). We’re talking about Janeane Garofalo, Reggie Watts, Kumail Nanjiani, both Michaels: Ian Black and Showalter, Wyatt Cenac, Kristen Schaal, the list goes on. There’s a lot of great footage of older fests, interviews and bits you’d never have seen otherwise.
The second half deals with how he and his wife Katie (who has also been heavily involved with the comedy scene) deal with her cancer and how they, and comedians in general, deal with finality.
It’s a very sincere and heartfelt tribute from seasoned news and doc producers but first-time directors, Julie Smith Clem and Ken Druckerman celebrate the groundwork Eugene and Katie have created.
(Hulu/VOD) Brea Grant is one busy creative. Tracking 2020 film releases alone, she wrote and appeared in this year’s LUCKY, popped up in THE STYLIST (sadly, I’ve been unable able to watch either yet), had a prominent role in AFTER MIDNIGHT, and still found time to write and direct 12 HOUR SHIFT.
12 HOUR SHIFT is a taut dark comedy about Mandy (Angela Bettis, MAY), a junkie nurse trying to appease her organ trafficking cousin Regina (Chloe Farnworth, IN CIRCLES) who misplaced the kidney Mandy pilfered for her. It’s a nasty good time featuring absolutely deplorable behavior from everyone involved but, despite behaving very badly, the characters are uniquely fleshed out and feel surprisingly grounded. While you can tell Chloe Farnworth is having a lot of fun leaning into her character’s impulses, the film belongs to Angela Bettis with her gruff voice and stern stares.
It helps that 12 HOUR SHIFT is tightly constructed, the score seamlessly — and surprisingly — weaves through genres, Grant and cinematographer/composer Matt Glass (SQUIRREL and the upcoming GHOSTS OF THE OZARKS) make the most of the hospital space and ensure that every color pops, and they somehow managed to (briefly) wrangle Mick Foley.
It’s worth noting that Brea Grant -also- co-hosts the READING GLASSES podcast with Mallory O’Meara, who wrote the edifying biography about Milicent ‘Designer of The Gill Man’ Patrick: THE LADY FROM THE BLACK LAGOON!
(Hulu/Paramount+/VOD) FREAKS & GEEKS is finally available to stream! If you haven’t already purchased the DVD, or have enough grey hair to have watched it when it first aired, Hulu managed to clear all of the music rights and — after a bit of a stumble out of the gait — have the eps properly ordered.
If you’re a product of the 80s — especially if you were a nerd in the 80s — it’ll be a trip down memory lane. If not, given how absurdly recognizable all of the actors and creatives are, it’ll be another sort of nostalgia for you, as it introduced the world to: Judd Apatow, Linda Cardellini, Paul Feig, James Franco, Busy Philipps, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Mike White. A laundry list of modern heavy hitters, all of whom cut their teeth on this show.
(Starz/VOD) A funny and surprisingly sweet quarter-century crisis film/rom-com that’s is well-calibrated for minds hungry for loads of smart quips.
Lucy (Geraldine Viswanathan, BLOCKERS, MIRACLE WORKERS), a mid-20s pack rat with the habit of hanging onto keepsakes of her exes, is working towards her dream job as a gallery owner with her attractive and responsible boyfriend Max (Utkarsh Ambudkar, PITCH PERFECT) at a NYC museum run by her idol Eva Woolf (Bernadette Peters, who needs no introduction).
Within the span of one night, she loses both Max and her job and, in a drunk/depressed stupor, gets into what she thinks is her Lyft, but it’s just one dude who forgot to lock his passenger side door. The dude, Nick, takes pity on her and drives her home, and they start orbiting around each other. Lucy discovers that he’s trying to rehab an old YMCA into a hotel, and she takes the opportunity to set up a gallery inspired by her attempts to let go of her exes’ knickknacks, hence the title of the film.
This is writer/director Natalie Krinsky’s debut film, but she’s been writing for TV — including a long run on GOSSIP GIRL — for quite some time, and it shows. The heart of the film is the bluntly smart and rapid comedic patter of the dialogue, as opposed to flashy visuals or convoluted set pieces — although he film’s lighting is vibrantly under-lit, a rarity in rom-coms — and Krinsky couldn’t have hoped for a better lead for her script than Viswanathan. While Viswanathan has always stood out in every work she’s been involved in, her extremely expressive face and ability to turn on a dime pulls off a character that could come across as a bit too intense or creepy.
Viswanathan doesn’t have to solely carry the film on her shoulders either, as the supporting cast is ridiculously talented and fill out the film’s flavor: Lucy’s extremely supportive, but gloriously unique, roommates are HAMILTON’s Phillipa Soo (not a role I expected to see her in) and Molly Gordon (TNT’s ANIMAL KINGDOM and Hulu’s RAMY), and Arturo Castro (BROAD CITY, NARCOS) has a great rapport with Lucy as Nick’s friend. Even Nathan Dales (LETTERKENNY) pops up in a slightly gimmicky role!
While the breathless jokes, earnestness, and conventional story beats may turn some folks off, I couldn’t help but embrace it. In a genre full of paint-by-numbers comfort food mediocrity, it’s nice to see a rom-com add some verve and push the boundaries a bit, while remaining supremely entertaining.
(Prime) A light comedy/horror movie about four city boys (three hellion misfits, another a straight-up nerd) who have mostly unwillingly signed up to participate in The Duke of Edinbergh’s Award, an ‘outdoor adventure challenge in the Highlands’ set up in 1956 by the Duke of Edinbergh to help inspire young teens to ‘attain standards of achievement and endeavour in a wide variety of active interests’. (The film opens with a clearly faux-dated training video that — partially due to its use of fonts — feels like parody, but it is not, the Award is a very real thing: https://www.royal.uk/60-years-duke-edinburghs-award .)
Left without adult supervision, and only the barest of instructions, the boys dick around, smoke up (using part of the map they were given), and act generally obnoxious (except for the nerd, who is disheartened he’s not receiving the bonding adventure he’d hoped for). For the first third of the film, sitting through the scenes of infantile behavior is tedious, but the gears shift upon the introduction of a older stranger determined to kill youths, and he has his sights trained on them.
From there the adventure really begins, as the boys try to find ways to survive despite their incompetence and their willingness to leap first and look later. There’s a particularly rousing break about midway through that serves as a self-indulgent music video — this is the first feature effort from writer/director Ninian Doff, who has previously directed videos for acts like Run The Jewels and the Chemical Brothers — but the song and visuals ratchet up the fun, before culminating in a final act that tries to draw out a bit of political satire before immediately turning on its heel as if to tell the audience ‘fuck that, have a few more laughs.’
It helps that those playing the boys are able to come across as goofs instead of maniacs, and DUKED is fleshed out with great supporting talent like Eddie Izzard, Kate Dickie (THE VVITCH, PROMETHEUS, PREVENGE), Alice Lowe (SIGHTSEERS, PREVENGE), and Jonathan Aris (loads of British TV like HUMANS, SHERLOCK, etc.) Yes, it’s a slight film but, by the end, it had earned a bit of love.
(hoopla/kanopy/Netflix/VOD) A delightfully filthy ‘last summer before college’ tale co-written by and starring Hannah Marks (DIRK GENTLY’S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY, the previously mentioned I USED TO GO HERE). Marks plays April (coincidentally, also the name of her character in I USED TO GO HERE) who, after a whirlwind senior year relationship with Nick (Dylan Sprouse, as in the Sprouse that -isn’t- in RIVERDALE) — swiftly conveyed through a montage set to X-RAY SPEX’s -Obsessed With You- — the two break up. Nick rebounds with new-to-town Clara (Liana Liberato, THE BEACH HOUSE (2020)) who, much to April’s surprise, isn’t a terrible person. In fact, the two hit it off and become fast friends, despite their shared history with Nick.
It’s a winsome look at the intensity of both young love and teen friendships, earnest and honest but never too serious, and features in-jokes that are earned as opposed to a litany of pop culture riffs. First-time director Benjamin Kasulke (hard-working indie cinematographer who has shot everything from Guy Maddin’s BRAND UPON THE BRAIN to BETWEEN TWO FERNS: THE MOVIE) keeps the pace lively, embellishing bits here to wring the most from a scene, but often gets out of the way and lets Marks lead the way.
“We are going to have -one dinner- that doesn’t end in kissing fat asses or sucking dicks!”
(fubo/hoopla/kanopy/Showtime/VOD) EXTRA ORDINARY is an extremely charming and winsome Irish horror-comedy about a woman named Rose (comedian Maeve Higgins) who has been bestowed with paranormal talents, which include the ability to see ghosts. Unfortunately, those powers backfired on her, resulting in the death of her father, so she swore them off and instead became a driving instructor. Unfortunately, local man Martin Martin (Barry Ward, THE END OF THE F***ING WORD) and washed up musician Christian Winter (Will Forte, MACGRUBER, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, clearly having fun playing a villain) will severely test that resolution.
EXTRA ORDINARY could coast along on the quality of its low-key goofs and gags and be a fun hangout horror rom-com, but the overarching story (penned by the directors Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman, with contributions from Higgins) jauntily moves along and escalates into one very fun but very odd climax. Literally.
It also features several finely produced video segments that recall GARTH MERENGHI’S DARKPLACE and LOOK AROUND YOU, fully rounding out the film into a terrifically satisfying film. Sadly, it was released in the US right before lockdown, but hopefully it’ll find an audience sooner rather than later.
(Hulu) Yes, PALM SPRINGS is yet another film riffing on GROUNDHOG DAY, where folks are trapped reliving a day over-and-over again, and while everyone was surprisingly pleased when EDGE OF TOMORROW, HAPPY DEATH DAY, and RUSSIAN DOLL proved to be amazing works, I don’t think many people expected Hulu’s PALM SPRINGS to capture the same kind of magic.
Yet, it does. It’s an utterly charming high-concept rom-com that improves on the formula. Samberg plays a less-aspirational fuckup version of the lovable, learnable lunkhead he’s played on BROOKLYN NINE-NINE and it works here, but Cristin Milioti (who I know from FARGO S2, but others may know from HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER) is the star of the show. She’s another fuckup — describing the hows and whys would sadly spoil matters — but she’s the lynchpin of the film, the actionable agent that refuses to settle for living every day as a bridesmaid. Oh, and J.K. Simmons is a third-wheel in a very delightful way. (RIVERDALE fans may want to note that Camila Mendes is in it too, but is given very little to do but sit around and look sultry.)
The trailer below arguably gives a bit too much away, so I’d skip it, but it’s there if you’re on the fence.
(Hulu/VOD) I love fictional (emphasis on fictional) works about con-artists, smooth talkers, grifters — however you want to name ‘em, I’ll line up to watch a work about ‘em.
BUFFALOED falls into the genre of ‘grifters with a heart of gold’ that I like, as opposed to the grifters that took over film around the late 80s. (I blame WALL STREET.) It features Zoey Deutch (who keeps flying under the rader, but she’s fantastic in FLOWER) as Peg, a lower class teenager living in Buffalo, NY whose father died of a heart attack when she was young, leaving her with her brother (SCHITT’S CREEK’s Noah Reid) and her mother, played by Judy Greer. Peg is consumed with having enough money to never have to worry about finances ever again and, as a youth, runs a few mostly-harmless small scams like reselling buffalo wings and trafficking loosies in her high school parking lot.
Peg gets accepted into her first college pick, but her mom informs her that they don’t have enough money to actually send her, so she upgrades her grifting and starts selling counterfeit Bills football tickets, which eventually lands her in jail before she has a chance to finish high school.
Several years and many lawyer bills later, she gets out and gets a phone call from a debt scammer (yes, we’ve culturally moved along from the penny stocks of say, BOILER ROOM (2000) to debt collection) and she sees an opportunity to wipe out her owed ‘cash’ as a debt collector and she leaps at it, albeit on her own terms.
The film is brash and brisk: the script — via Brian Sacca — is tighter than a drum, and director Tanya Wexler gives it proper verve. If there’s one fault, it’s that the portrayal of the town and characters occasionally become more cartoonish than necessary but, otherwise, it’s a fun, well-crafted, and well-disguised screed against the state of consumer debt in America.
(VOD) For far too many years, I’ve habitually trawled through the entirety of the Chicago International Film Festival (CIFF) yearly schedule and shot off a list to a few friends to map out what we wanted to see together. The list would include not just a list of film titles and descriptions, but also trailers not linked in the CIFF schedule, additional context, interest level, and a list of potential screening times/conflicts.
It’s never been a fun job, but it’s a necessary one because CIFF is surprisingly daunting for reasons best left for another time, and most folks I know don’t bother with CIFF unless someone else puts in a bit of effort. Every year, I’m rewarded by finding a gem I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise, and had I not put in the effort, I probably would have missed out on THE TWENTIETH CENTURY last year. Thankfully, unlike many films that screen once at CIFF and are never heard from again, THE TWENTIETH CENTURY was picked up by Oscilloscope and can be purchased today!
The description I sent off in the yearly missive was: “It may be puerile, but I keep hearing that it’s like Maddin meets John Waters, and I’m down for that.”
Upon watching it, yes, Guy Maddin is an obvious inspiration, with its extreme Soviet-inspired camerawork, choppy editing/frame-gaps, kink, and scrutiny of Canada. However, director Matthew Rankin’s use of color, tempo, and symmetry makes it very much the work of a new auteur instead of something simply derivative. Yes, it’s weird but, despite its eccentricities, it’s rarely off-putting, and it’s supremely entertaining. The trailer will immediately inform you as to whether it’s something in or out of your wheelhouse. If it tickles you, please, pick up a copy.