kanopy

JUDY & PUNCH (2019)

March 16, 2021

(Hulu/hoopla/kanopy/VOD) One trend that I love with genre films nowadays is how many women actors are getting chances at directing their own pieces. I just mentioned Brea Grant yesterday — still probably best known for her performance in HEROES — but also BLACK CHRISTMAS (2019) director Sophia Takal, HAPPIEST SEASON director Mary Holland, cult comedian and PREVENGE’s Alice Lowe, THE WOMAN’s Pollyanna McIntosh helming DARLIN’ and, also, Mirrah Foulkes who directed JUDY & PUNCH, but has also appeared in THE CROWN, TOP OF THE LAKE: CHINA GIRL, and ANIMAL KINGDOM.

As you may suspect from the name, JUDY & PUNCH is a revenge twist on the British puppet theater/domestic violence mainstay, while still taking place in the 17th century, but also has witches (of a sort). It’s an odd genre film with very specific music choices, including a very idiosyncratic soundtrack that includes a lot of anachronistic synth covers, and an oddly unnecessary cover of LAIBACH’s cover of OPUS’ -Life is Life-. It’s not perfect, and there is a lot of abuse, but I’ll take weird swings like this any day of the week.

Sadly, the film runs a bit long — the middle feels more than a little padded — but when you have Mia Wasikowska (CRIMSON PEAK, STOKER) and Damon Herriman (ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, but he’ll always be Dewey Crowe from JUSTIFIED to me), I’d also be tempted to fight to include every scene you shot.

MIKEY & NICKY (1976

March 9, 2021

(Criterion/HBO MAX/kanopy/tubi/VOD) Elaine May’s exploration of two desperate NYC mobsters (Peter Falk and John Cassavettes) trying to save themselves while using each other is as good as any take on weathered, toxic male friendship as you’re going to get on film.

There are two versions of it out there, but the one streaming is May’s director’s cut which is streamlined, but far more ramshackle (see: https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2020/06/mikey-and-nicky-liner-notes/ for more details). Watch whichever one you can wrangle!

THE TURIN HORSE (2011)

March 4, 2021

(kanopy/Mubi/VOD) THE TURIN HORSE is the last film from Béla Tarr (probably best known for WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES or, if you run in my circles, for the approximately seven hour long SATANTANGO). I tend to doubt it’s the last, as he’s still directing documentaries and producing shorts, but the film — which was co-directed by his wife Ágnes Hranitzky — certainly has a sense of finality to it.

It’s a gorgeous black-and-white piece, told over the span of roughly two-and-a-half hours, totals 30 shots and it moves at a glacial pace. It’s about a father and daughter, and the father happens to own the horse that was whipped so many times it made Nietzsche have a breakdown.

It’s an existential marvel, but, well, that’s not exactly what I remember it for. What I really remember are the boiled potatoes and, when I see a boiled potato, I think of this film.

If you don’t have the time for this masterpiece, may I suggest this 1m44s edit?

FEELS GOOD MAN (2020)

February 19, 2021

(kanopy/VOD) FEELS GOOD MAN is a deep dive into the re-appropriation of artist Matt Furie’s Pepe the Frog, and the steps Furie takes to try to get the character back.

Most of the doc focuses on Furie recounting his history and struggles with the laidback frog, but director Arthur Jones and producer Giorgio Angelini bring in artists (including BOJACK HORSEMAN’s Lisa Hanawalt) and comedians/writers (such as BARRY’s Emily Heller) and academics to flesh out the online world of trolls and memes. Even if you believe you know the story of Pepe — and I certainly thought I did — you’ll still find new and surprising bits.

If FEELS GOOD MAN was just a collection of talking head interviews, it’d still be worth a watch, but Arthur Jones leans on his animation background to liven up the doc with vivid, kinetic animated sequences depicting Pepe and his friends as they react to the events as they unfold. It’s a welcome respite from the traditional motion graphics interstitials that pepper most modern documentaries, and is so expertly done that I was left wishing that a BOYS CLUB animated show existed.

SORRY WE MISSED YOU (2019)

February 18, 2021

(Criterion/kanopy/VOD) Ken Loach’s SORRY WE MISSED YOU is a slow-motion car crash of a financial horror story about a family trying to get by while giving all of their spare time to low-wage gig jobs. The husband Ricky (Kris Hitchen) has just sold his wife Abbie’s (Debbie Honeywood) car to purchase a delivery van in order to delivery Amazon packages and the like around the U.K., and Abbie is now forced to bus around to her nursing jobs. Both of them are out of the house for twelve hours a day, which results in their teenage son’s troublemaking escalating and their young daughter being the one waking her mom and dad up when they fall asleep in front of the television. Bills mount up, fees spiral out of control, and it looks like there’s no way out.

While their debt and stress casts a pall over the film, Paul Laverty’s (who penned Loach’s prior film I, DANIEL BLAKE) script inserts enough kind and sweet moments, such as one afternoon when Ricky takes his daughter along delivering packages, and there’s a poignant scene between Abbie and one of her ‘clients’ where they share family photos. The client pointedly shows off pictures of her in her old union job.

That one scene, where Abbie’s client talks about her old union job as ‘the good times’, is the only explicit commentary that Laverty and Loach insert, but ultimately the entire film is a plea for a return to the age of unionization and workers’ rights. They make sure to hammer home the simple fact that the gig economy is a return to pre-union times: a return to the company store, a return to being nickeled-and-dimed, a return to job inequality, a return to inexistent worker protection.

Near the end of the film, the daughter yells “I just want to go back to the way things were before!” and, while she’s too young to realize that the ‘before’ wasn’t necessary significantly better, she realizes it’s far better than the stressed-out hell everyone is dealing with now. She deserves better. We as a society deserve better than this.

THE QUIET EARTH (1985)

February 17, 2021

(hoopla/kanopy/tubi/VOD) THE QUIET MAN is a ‘last man on earth’ story (loosely based on Craig Harrison’s novel), one that wouldn’t feel out of place in THE TWILIGHT ZONE, but it justifies its existence by featuring an electric performance from Bruno Lawrence, being set in New Zealand, and by containing a number of interesting and cerebral twists, including one hell of an ending.

There’s a trailer, but it’s essentially a condensed summary of the entire film, so I’d refrain from watching it until -after- viewing the movie.

THIS IS CINERAMA (1952)

February 2, 2021

(kanopy/Apple TV/Blu-Ray) Cinerama was a widescreen shooting and projection process that, at its time, was the closest you could get to a wholly immersive filmgoing experience. The way it worked was primitive and troublesome, as it not only shot three negatives at the same time (similar to early Technicolor films), but it did so through three cameras, positioned so the footage could be (mostly) seamlessly projected by three projectors.

The end result is spectacularly overwhelming. While the primary allure is the all-encompassing visuals, you’re also bombarded by seven-channel directional surround sound. It truly is a unique experience when it works, but projecting films like this is a hairy process, one that requires constant monitoring for -each- projector. (You can read more about the projection process here.)

If memory serves, the process broke down and had to be re-synced when I saw THIS IS CINERAMA at Los Angeles’ Cinerama theater during TCM Fest, a time when you have your top projectionists on the job. (The LA Cinerama is one of the few existing Cinerama theaters; the other two are in Seattle and Bradford, England.)

Cinerama as a shooting process didn’t last long, thanks to the unwieldy cameras and the introduction of single-strip widescreen lenses like the Ultra Panavision 70, but the theaters survived as many widescreen spectacles were converted to their three-strip projection setup, not unlike how many 35mm films are blown up for IMAX screens.

“So,” you might ask, “if it’s about the experience of being in a high-end theater, why should I watch this on my laptop? Also, isn’t the film mostly a travelogue with some choreographed water skiing?” Well, yes, you certainly aren’t watching for the story. However, while the current restoration allows you to watch it like any widescreen film, it also allows you to view it in the shape you’d see it in at the theater. In a time when we can’t — or at least shouldn’t — be attending theaters, it’s a similarly unique home viewing experience.

THE SKELETON TWINS (2014)

January 23, 2021

(Hulu/kanopy/Prime/VOD) Recently I’ve been waking up with STARSHIP’s -Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now- in my head and I couldn’t quite figure out why. It’s a top-notch slice of 80s pop, but hardly a song in my normal rotation.

Then I remembered the following scene from THE SKELETON TWINS:

Not the worst scene to occasionally wake to.

THE SKELETON TWINS is a charming, human look at two very fucked up fraternal twins who have been estranged for ten years, but re-unite when the sister Maggie (Kristin Wiig) is told that her brother Milo (Bill Hader) has unsuccesfully attempted suicide. Maggie invites Milo to live with her and her husband (Luke Wilson), and together they explore the miseries and coping mechanisms of their lives.

It’s rare for film to get adult brother/sister dynamics right, but writer Mark Heyman (BLACK SWAN) and director Craig Johnson (ALEX STRANGELOVE) do a fantastic job of managing the push-and-pull aging siblings have, without turning either of them into cartoonish monsters. It’s not as cheerless as it may sound — especially when you have interludes like the above Starship one — but also not as maudlin as it could be.

THE FAREWELL (2019)

January 22, 2021

(kanopy/Prime/VOD)? With the recent handwringing about theaters potentially going out of business due to the pandemic, a lot of folks focus on the communal experience of shared spectacle and of whiplash moments, but few discuss how the darkness of theaters also allow us to nakedly indulge in other emotions with strangers.

Case in point: THE FAREWELL. (Warning, some small spoilers ahead, but really, they aren’t.) I watched it solo on a balmy Friday night, late in July 2019. There was a fairly sizable crowd and, while we laughed and tensed up at every well-crafted moment, it was the end — and I don’t mean the epilogue — that brought the entire room to tears. As the taxi drove away, everyone was audibly sobbing, men and women, myself included. (Although, I admit, I’m a soft touch when it comes to tears.)

Obviously, we were saddened for Billi, for her grandma, for the front that the family felt forced to put up, their regret at not being able to be truthful and have proper closure. However, as the camera revealed the rest of the family inhabiting the cab, it felt like we were also crying for those around us who had lost family, who knew what it was like to experience unreconciled grief. The theater became a shared funereal experience, one that simply wouldn’t have happened in a brightly lit room with a giant LCD screen.

While the film’s epilogue staunched the tears a bit, there remained a somber feeling in the air as we numbly walked towards the exit, barely looking at one another, perhaps a bit embarrassed, perhaps a bit raw. It’s these sort of experiences I’ve missed the most during the pandemic, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

BREATHLESS (1983)

January 21, 2021

(hoopla/kanopy) I last watched Jim McBride’s (DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE) remake of BREATHLESS many moons ago, back when I could walk down the street to my cult video store and rent a VHS copy. Despite not thinking much of it at the time, I have vivid memories of the film’s neon spills, as well as one terrible joke:

“You know Frank Lloyd Wright? This is Frank Lloyd Wrong.”

Watching it recently, after years of scrutinizing adaptations, I realized I was far too tough on it.

Structurally, McBride’s film is the same as Godard’s, he just inverts the locale and the protagonists’ countries of origin; instead of taking place in France with a French cad (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and American love interest (Jean Seberg), it’s an American cad (Richard Gere) with a French love interest (Valérie Kaprisky).

McBride, and screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSCRE 2 -and- PARIS, TEXAS) are aware that trying to recreate the verve of 60’s BREATHLESS would be futile, so they ramp matters up a bit. Their BREATHLESS is a sleek, neon-soaked affair that wants nothing to do with jump cuts. Gere’s no longer an admirer of Bogart, but instead idolizes Jerry Lee Lewis. He doesn’t have the cool collected air of Belmondo, but instead is a ball of energy, constantly moving. As opposed to the erotic tête-à-tête between Belmondo & Seberg, they lean into full-blown sex scenes.

Is it a good film? Arguably, yes, it’s a gripping erotic thriller. Is it on par with Godard’s BREATHLESS? Oh, no, please. Godard’s BREATHLESS is a genre masterpiece, stitched together by sheer reactionary inventiveness and the vibrant performances from the leads. McBride’s BREATHLESS is a fascinating flip side, shining a spotlight on American appetites that falters mostly because both Gere and Kaprisky, and American culture in general, lack the enigmatic allure that makes the original film work.

One last note: BREATHLESS (1983) leaves Hulu on February 28th!