Comedy Archives - Page 16 of 78 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Living in Oblivion (1995) – DVD|[20th Anniversary] – Blu-ray Disc

March 17, 20161990s, 2016, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Esoterica, Satire, Scream/Shout! Factory

***/****
DVD – Image B Sound B Extras B-
BD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Steve Buscemi, Catherine Keener, Dermot Mulroney, Danielle Von Zernick
written and directed by Tom DiCillo

by Walter Chaw A film carefully structured in three parts, Tom DiCillo’s Living in Oblivion demands tired adjectives like “offbeat” and “quirky” while dancing dangerously close to hyperbole along the lines of “brilliant” and “incisive.” What it is, though, is its own beast–a meta-structure of dream sequences (the first two segments “are,” the third is “about”) concerning six takes of scene six–the devil’s number applied to the trials of filmmaking, including technical accidents, the egos of the stars, and behind-the-scenes relationships that threaten professionalism. With those plates spinning, DiCillo layers in elements of fantasy bleeding into reality (the second section ends with the oft-repeated scene sloughing into “reality,” then into dream), the final segment integrating spoof symbols (an apple, a little person) with a real symbol (the mother).

Zootopia (2016)

March 5, 20162016, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disney, Theatrical

***/****
screenplay by Jared Bush & Phil Johnston
directed by Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush

by Walter Chaw Early on in Disney’s Zootopia, directed somehow by a triumvirate (Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush) from a screenplay by Bush and Phil Johnston, a baby fox declares that it would like to grow up to be an elephant. It even has an elephant hoodie; the creature idolizes, it appears, elephant culture. It gets a laugh. It’s worth the conversation to wonder what about this is funny. At its essence, the idea that something could grow to be something else is funny. It’s also funny because it knowingly, gently pokes fun at our culture of “you can be anything you want to be,” the source of more sometimes-murderous disappointment than any other child-rearing strategy endemic to the West. Astronaut? No problem. And Zootopia opens on a children’s pageant where a little animal solemnly declares that where in primordial times he would have been predator or prey, in civilized times, he has the choice to maybe be an astronaut, or an accountant. The third way this is funny is harsher, in that it begins to touch on the truism that there are certain traits you’re born with, and while that’s a no-brainer when it comes to the rest of the animal kingdom, it’s a tough thing for most proud Judeo-Christians to accept. We have hardwiring, see, and accepting that means there are a lot of other things we need to accept as well, almost none of them politically correct and all of them fraught with delicate dancing around the issue. Zootopia is complicated as hell.

The Good Dinosaur (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

February 23, 20162015, 2016, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Disney, Family, Pixar, Road Movie

Gooddino1

***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
screenplay by Meg LeFauve
directed by Peter Sohn and Bob Peterson

by Walter Chaw Arlo (voiced by Raymond Ochoa) is the runt in a frontier family of stylized dinosaur herbivores who struggles to live up to the example of towering Poppa (Jeffrey Wright) on the family farmstead. He’s clumsy, though, and easily frightened, and when he finds himself incapable of killing a mammalian vermin (Jack Bright), he unwittingly causes the death of his father. Arlo joins forces with the vermin, eventually, dubbing him “Spot” (he’s a little orphaned human boy) and relying on him to forage sustenance for him in the wild world outside. Spot, in return, relies upon Arlo for protection in the film’s final set-piece as Spot is set upon by a flock of fundamentalist pterodactyls. Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur is, in other words, a horror western about a frontier bespotted with monsters and monstrous ideologies, set right there at the liminal space–as all great westerns are–between the old ways and the encroaching new. It’s far more disturbing than has generally been acknowledged and, in being disturbing, it offers a tremendous amount of subtext layered onto a deceptively simple story. It posits an Earth where the dinosaur-ending comet misses impact, leading to millions of years of evolved adaptations and ending, as the film begins, with the emergence of homo sapiens on schedule, but skittering around on all fours and howling at their saurian masters. The Good Dinosaur is an existential horrorshow.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

February 16, 2016****/****, 1940s, 2016, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Romance, The Criterion Collection, UK, War

Colonelblimp3

****/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras A
starring Anton Walbrook, Deborah Kerr, Roger Livesey, Roland Culver
written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

by Walter Chaw The prototype in many ways for Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, although lighthearted and easily mistaken for a romp, is an existential horror film that, for all the things it’s otherwise about, is most vitally about what it’s like to grow old. There’s a moment early on–when our hero, Clive Candy (Roger Livesey), realizes he’s let the love of his life marry his best friend–that clarifies exactly what the picture has on its mind. For the rest of the film, as the kingdom of his memories grows to a size that dwarfs modernity rushing past, Candy finds shades of the lost Edith (Deborah Kerr), his personal Lenore, resurfacing in the faces of young women the world over. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp understands that as one grows old, an entire village sprouts in the mind, full of beloved businesses and places that have long since disappeared, peopled by old flames and loved ones, dead or just vanished, but in any case never again to resume the form in which memory has frozen them. Though memorable for its technical brilliance, its Technicolor vibrancy, and its courageously sprung narrative structure, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp‘s ability to pinion the sadness, the loneliness, that experience carries with it is what makes the movie what it is. Life as a process of emotional attrition: Last man standing is cold comfort, indeed.

Deadpool (2016)

February 12, 20162016, Action, Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical

**/****
starring Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, T.J. Miller, Gina Carano
screenplay by Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick
directed by Tim Miller

by Walter Chaw I get it. Deadpool is post-modern. It's absolutely aware of itself. It's The Cabin in the Woods. The primogenitor of Deadpool is Dennis Miller's '90s standup: sneering, smarmy, arch, and peppered with pop-culture references running the gamut from Ferris Bueller to Limp Bizkit to the fact that there are two Professor X's in Fox's X-Men franchise. Carted off to stand before the beloved X-Man, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) asks, "McAvoy or Stewart?" And an audience of savvy comic-book/film fans cheers because they've been recognized. It's the button rock stars push when they say, "Hello (wherever they are)!" at the beginning of a set. It announces that they are aware of the space they occupy, and legions of concertgoers make the devil horns and light their lighters in appreciation: "Yeah, man, you're here. In that you are correct." Deadpool is about recognizing itself for what it is and recognizing its audience for recognizing where they are (which is there, recognizing that their hero recognizes where he is). When Deadpool's alter ego, being wheeled into the place where he's going to be turned into Deadpool, begs them not to give him an animated green suit, well, you knew that Reynolds was disastrously the hero in Green Lantern, right? It's only the second time it's referenced. He also calls a little bald girl Sinead O'Connor twice, because it's hard to write jokes. He could have called her "Blue Sunshine," except the only thing Deadpool can't afford to be is smarter than its audience. Relax–it never is.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) [The Signature Collection] – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

February 10, 2016****/****, 1930s, 2016, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, FFC Must-Own, Musical, Romance

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
story adaptation Ted Sears, Richard Creedon, Otto Englander, Dick Richard, Earl Hurd, Merrill De Maris, Dorothy Ann Blank, Webb Smith
supervising director David Hand

by Bill Chambers Walt Disney was shooting for the moon with 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, not just his first but the first animated feature. He of the Silly Symphony wanted it to have prestige, fostering an obsessive-compulsive streak within the studio that is curiously reflected in the film’s epic preoccupation with orderliness, cleanliness, and labour. It has the air of manifesto when one considers that of the eight songs on the soundtrack, two, “Whistle While You Work” and “Heigh-ho,” are about the satisfaction of work¹ while a third, “Bluddle-Uddle-Um-Dum,” is a set of bathing instructions subtitled “The Dwarfs’ Washing Song.” In her unrelenting fastidiousness, Snow White reeks of self-portraiture (armchair Freuds might speculate on Snow White’s other qualities, such as her being so perfect as to drive the competition mad, as they apply to Disney, already an Ozymandian figure armed with multiple Academy awards by the time of production), and it’s because of this that her predilection for housework doesn’t feel like the typical chauvinism abundant in the Disney canon. When she scolds two squirrels for sweeping dirt under the carpet, it’s difficult not to hear it as an ethos.

Hail, Caesar! (2015)

February 6, 2016****/****, 2016, Authors: Walter Chaw, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Drama, Musical, Mystery, Scarlett Johansson, Theatrical

Hail, Caesar!: A Tale of the Christ
****/****
starring Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes
written and directed by Joel & Ethan Coen

by Walter Chaw Halfway through the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar!, studio head/fixer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin playing Jon Polito) stands against the opulent, grand entrance to his golden-age Hollywood movie studio and talks about the coming of the future. There’s a scene in a Chinese restaurant where someone pulls out a photograph of a mushroom cloud taken at a freshly-nuked Bikini Atoll and declares, solemnly, that it’s a picture of the future. There’s another scene where waves crash against a pair of rocks in a direct callback to Barton Fink, the Coens’ other golden-age Hollywood homage, outside the bachelor-pad mansion of Gene Kelly-type Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum), who happens to be the head of an enclave of Communists (are there ten?) calling themselves “The Future.” The Coens at their best describe spiritual blight. They do it in a lot of ways, across multiple genres. Hail, Caesar! opens with Mannix, a real-life figure in Hollywood tangentially connected to George Reeves’s death (murder? Suicide? Who knows?), in a confessional just a day after his last confession and a day before his next. (“Really, it’s too much Eddie. You’re not that bad.”) Mannix–more fictional than actual, it should be noted, in exactly the same way that O Brother, Where Art Thou? is the most faithful adaptation of The Odyssey there ever was despite having almost no relationship to the literal text–indeed doesn’t seem all that bad when most of what he confesses is lying to his wife (Alison Pill) about quitting cigarettes. “It’s hard, Father.” And he cries. The movie is about spiritual blight, and the sin that Mannix is constantly trying to confess is that he doesn’t know what he believes. For me, the Coens are at their best when they tackle this spiritual blight through the prism of artists and their attempts to create. Every artist is a Frankenstein. Every work is a monster.

Zoolander (2001) [Special Collector’s Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc (2016)

February 3, 20162000s, 2016, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Satire

**½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras A
BLU-RAY – Image B+ Sound A Extras A
starring Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Christine Taylor
screenplay by Drake Sather & Ben Stiller and John Hamburg
directed by Ben Stiller

by Walter Chaw Ben Stiller has a very particular genius for satirical imitation. When he says that he based Derek Zoolander on “some cross between Jason Priestly and Luke Perry,” one can be sure that the offspring is an uncomfortably dead-on collection of insouciant pouts, long blank stares, and dim-witted pronouncements. We know that Stiller is good at destroying celebrity; the bigger question is can an extended sketch featuring one of his burlesques sustain interest and consistently inspire laughter? The answer is “fitfully,” so, yes and no.

The Intern (2015) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

January 25, 20162015, 2016, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Robert De Niro

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras D+
starring Robert De Niro, Anne Hathaway, Rene Russo, Anders Holm
written and directed by Nancy Meyers

by Bill Chambers Back to back, literally, Robert De Niro made Mean Streets, The Godfather Part II, Taxi Driver, 1900, The Last Tycoon, New York, New York, The Deer Hunter, Raging Bull, True Confessions, The King of Comedy, and Once Upon a Time in America. Brazil, The Mission, Angel Heart, Midnight Run, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, This Boy’s Life, Casino, and Heat punctuate his next ten years as a working actor. So I’ve never really felt the urge to bash De Niro for his late-period career choices, which are mostly about maintaining a standard of living, funding entrepreneurial bids, and mellowing with age. (This is not a man who owes us anything.) And his persona–whatever it is, can we agree that his most volatile roles inform it?–has not been so debauched by decades of ham that there’s not a bit of a subversive kick to seeing him play Mary Poppins, complete with luggage though sans umbrella, in Nancy Meyers’s The Intern.

Dirty Grandpa (2016)

January 23, 20162016, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Road Movie, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Robert De Niro, Zac Efron, Aubrey Plaza, Dermot Mulroney
written by John M. Phillips
directed by Dan Mazer

by Walter Chaw It’s one of those boilerplates about an uptight guy on the eve of marrying a harridan taking a road trip with a free spirit to discover that maybe he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life (or the few years until he secures a divorce–the subtext of these things is always curiously traditional) selling out to The Man. Jason (Zac Efron) is that potential sell-out. You can tell because he dresses like the villain from an Eighties college sex comedy, is a corporate lawyer, and is engaged to a materialistic bimbo (Julianne Hough) who will justify his unconscionable hedonism by being a secret slut herself in his absence. The best of these films is its prototype, obviously (Capra’s It Happened One Night), but the one I return to most often is Bronwen Hughes’s curiously sticky–if only to me–Forces of Nature. The high concept this time around is that De Niro is the free-spirit road-tripper in a role that asks him to, literally at one point, be rapping grandmother Ellen Dow from The Wedding Singer. The imposition of this masterplot is really the only thing separating the film from “Jackass” spin-off Bad Grandpa, just as one word is the only thing separating the two concepts. De Niro’s Dick (and you do indeed get to see his dick–though admittedly, it’s probably a stunt dick) is a former Green Beret, by the way, which explains/doesn’t explain why he gets a Presidio fight sequence against a bunch of black hoods who’ve been taunting a gay black guy Dick has also recently been taunting.

Joy (2015)

December 25, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Comedy, Drama, Robert De Niro, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Edgar Ramirez, Bradley Cooper
screenplay by David O. Russell
directed by David O. Russell

by Walter Chaw After demonstrating with his last few movies that he’s not Martin Scorsese, David O. Russell has decided to kill two birds with one stone by demonstrating that he is neither Wes nor P.T. Anderson, either. In Joy, he proves that marrying Wes Anderson’s whimsical solipsism with P.T. Anderson’s Pynchon-esque biographical sketches is an amazingly stupid thing to do–one of those science experiments in ’50s B-movies that everyone knows is a bad idea except for the idiot doing the splicing. Yes, Joy is that bad. When it’s not being unbearably twee, it’s perving on Jennifer Lawrence like von Sternberg on Dietrich. But Joy ain’t no Blue Angel, and while I like Lawrence fine, I guess, Russell is sure as hell no von Sternberg. What I’m saying is that Russell is a terrible, glitchy director with a thing for Lawrence that he manifests by shooting her walking towards the camera with sunglasses, without sunglasses, with a wig and without a wig, in slow-motion or at normal speed, in daytime, nighttime; he lights her with the sun, with spots, with discretes, from below, and especially from behind–all in a kind of PENTHOUSE glamour. The only part of Joy that isn’t unwatchable is a sequence shot precisely like identical sequences in P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia, where an obviously tense Bradley Cooper, playing QVC programming director Neil Walker, shows the titular domestic goddess Joy (Lawrence) around the studio. I take it back, those were pretty bad, too. The only thing preventing Joy from being the worst movie of the year is that Pixels happened.

The Good Dinosaur (2015); The Revenant (2015); The Hateful Eight (2015)

December 25, 20152015, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Quentin Tarantino, Disney, Drama, Family, Mystery, Pixar, Revenge, Theatrical, Thriller, Western

THE GOOD DINOSAUR
***/****
screenplay by Meg LeFauve
directed by Peter Sohn and Bob Peterson

THE REVENANT
***½/****
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, a bear, angry junketeers
screenplay by Mark L. Smith & Alejandro G. Iñárritu
directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu

THE HATEFUL EIGHT
**/****
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bruce Dern
written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

Krampus (2015)

December 7, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Christmas, Comedy, Horror, Theatrical

**/****
starring Adam Scott, Toni Collette, David Koechner, Krista Stadler
written by Todd Casey & Michael Dougherty & Zach Shields
directed by Michael Dougherty

by Walter Chaw I used to have a collection of short stories edited by Isaac Asimov, The Twelve Frights of Christmas. Ramsey Campbell’s “The Chimney” is anthologized therein, and though it’s not directly a Krampus story, it’s sort of a Krampus story and was, at least, the first time I’d been introduced to the concept of something like an anti-Santa. It’s a great story. Michael Dougherty’s Krampus is not great, but with all the lulls and jokes misfiring, it does give you plenty of time to think about other things. (I didn’t like his Trick ‘r Treat either.) What works about the film are its first twenty minutes or so, where Dougherty seems to be setting up an unpleasant, nasty little commentary on the commodification of Christmas. There’s trouble, though, when the parts of your movie that work are the parts that compare best to Jingle All the Way. I’ll say, too, that there’s genuine delight in the appearance of weird snowmen on the lawn during a blizzard blackout, stranding a shitty family alone with their thoughts while a German alpine demon lurks about outside–as well as hope, however self-deluding and fleet, that Dougherty’s going to pay off the early abduction of the second-most sympathetic child of six. Alas, it’s ultimately as compromised as Trick ‘r Treat. The last five minutes are a masterpiece of playing both sides against the middle and pandering to an intended middlebrow audience. Like its PG-13 rating, Krampus is a devil’s bargain between horror film and family film. It’s the kind of thing that only really worked when it was Gremlins.

Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight (1995) [Collector’s Edition] + Tales from the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood (1996) [Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

November 30, 20151990s, 2015, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory, Thriller, Vampire

Demon Knight
***/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A
starring Billy Zane, William Sadler, Jada Pinkett, Brenda Bakke
written by Ethan Reiff & Cyrus Voris & Mark Bishop
directed by Ernest Dickerson

Bordello of Blood
*/**** Image B Sound C+ Extras A
starring Dennis Miller, Erika Eleniak, Angie Everhart, John Kassir
screenplay by A.L. Katz & Gilbert Adler
directed by Gilbert Adler

by Walter Chaw I didn’t have HBO as a kid. Didn’t even have cable. When I went over to friends’ houses, I would spend a lot of time wanting to watch MTV to try to catch up on all the popular culture I was missing. “Remote Control”, the first Jon Stewart show, “Dream On”, “The Kids in the Hall”–each of them represent gaping holes in my pop education. Lump in the Walter Hill-produced “Tales from the Crypt” anthology program with that group of things I knew about but only by title and reputation. My first exposure to the EC Comics-inspired/adapted-from show was through reprints of “Tales from the Crypt” and “Strange Tales” comics during the early-’90s industry boom. Then Ernest Dickerson’s fantastic Tales from the Crypt Presents Demon Knight (hereafter Demon Knight) satisfied every single expectation I had of something seeking to honour the ghoulish, sometimes puerile depravity of William Gaines’s seminal source material. It’s as gory as it is corny and smart as hell for recognizing that those were the only requirements. Doesn’t hurt that the practical-effects work is goopy and inventive. Oh, and the cast is exceptional.

Fantastic Fest ’15: Short Films

October 16, 2015****/****, 2015, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Disability, Drama, Esoterica, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Film Festivals, Horror, Japan, Romance, Satire, Sci-Fi, Short Films, Sweden, ZERO STARS

by Walter Chaw

The Babysitter Murders ****/**** (d. Ryan Spindell) For certain artists working in the short-film format, I don't have any idea how or why it is they haven't been called up to the big leagues yet. This speaks as much to my prejudice, obviously: there's nothing wrong with the short form. In literature, many of my favourite writers are best in the short form. In film, though, there's so little real opportunity for distribution that it seems a particular shame when guys like Ryan Spindell have only produced shorts. I'm not complaining (his work is excellent), merely hoping he has the means to continue. Spindell's latest, The Babysitter Murders, is so expertly composited that it would be kind of a shame to dissect it at all. Sufficed to say that it unearths a new place to take Wes Craven's Scream meta funhouse, and does it without a hint of smugness or show-off-y insecurity. It's beautifully paced, conceived, and executed. Look at a cooking scene early on, set to "Fast & Sweet" by Mondo Boys feat. Kestrin Pantera–the way it's shot and edited, the way Elie Smolkin's camera stalks and Eric Ekman cuts it all together. The movie's premise–a babysitter alone on a stormy night when a psycho escapes from an asylum–is as rote as they come, but Spindell, as he did with The Root of the Problem and dentists, finds something new to say. The performances are to a one pitch-perfect and the gore is appropriately horrifying; it's a film balanced in that space between hilarity for its excess and hilarity for its brilliance. I'm out of superlatives. Spindell is one of the finest voices working in genre right now, carving out a niche that's neither self-serious nor self-abnegating. He's full of joy, this one, and his movies are treasures.

Aladdin (1992) [Diamond Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD

October 12, 20151990s, 2015, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
screenplay by John Musker & Ron Clements and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio
directed by John Musker & Ron Clements

Portions of this review, including the first four paragraphs, were originally published on October 5, 2004.

by Bill Chambers Jeffrey Katzenberg may have revived the American animated feature while he was at Disney, but only one of the hits his reign yielded is worth a second viewing. Where 1989’s The Little Mermaid and especially 1991’s nauseating Beauty and the Beast tried to pass themselves off as Golden Age Disney (1937 (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)-1950 (Cinderella), for argument’s sake), before a certain stateliness loosened its grip on the house style, 1992’s Aladdin took its cue from Uncle Walt’s twilight years, the Sixties, when he was interested in telling–as he geared up to pass the torch, perhaps–mentor stories (The Sword in the Stone and The Jungle Book) and pop culture had finally caught up with his incongruous predilections for psychedelia and bohemianism. It’s a risk to emulate the period considered the birth of the studio’s Dark Ages, and Aladdin is the least spurious movie of Disney’s renaissance because of it.

Ghoulies (1985)/Ghoulies II (1988) [Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

October 7, 20151980s, 2015, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Fantasy, Horror, Scream/Shout! Factory

GHOULIES
**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Peter Liapis, Lisa Pelikan, Michael Des Barres, Jack Nance
screenplay by Luca Bercovici and Jefery Levy
directed by Luca Bercovici

GHOULIES II
***/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Damon Martin, Royal Dano, Phil Fondacaro, J. Downing
screenplay by Charlie Dolan and Dennis Paoli
directed by Albert Band

by Jefferson Robbins Not rip-off, not homage, but something in the water. Luca Bercovici’s 1985 Ghoulies, from the lo-fi film factory of Charles Band, felt on release like a ploy to frack cash out of Joe Dante’s Gremlins from the year before. In fact, it had a parallel development, launching pre-production in 1983 under the working title Beasties and formally premiering in Britain in November of 1984. It also boasts a far weirder strain of presentation than Dante’s peak, something Lynchian that goes beyond the mere presence of Jack Nance. It has its passel of ’80s “teen” types harassed by horrors, sure: the stoner(s), the ladykiller, the nerd–not to mention their attendant ladies, none of whom are given much personality, resulting in a deeply uninteresting film debut for young Mariska Hargitay. But their mannerisms, in large part, are so outré and alienating that it’s at times like watching an underfinanced dinner-theatre preview of 1986’s Blue Velvet. And then the dead warlock bursts out of the ground to be attended by a clutch of grody puppets.

A Brilliant Young Mind (2015)

October 3, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Disability, Drama, Theatrical, UK

X+Y
½*/****
starring Asa Butterfield, Rafe Spall, Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan
screenplay by James Graham
directed by Morgan Matthews

by Walter Chaw Reminding most of Camp in that it's ultimately more of a zoo for curiosities than an invitation for empathy, here's A Brilliant Young Mind, which posits, among all the Rain Man things it posits about autism, that the Chinese, besides being good at backflips, are very good at math. For the Chinese, you see, math is like art. It says so in this book that was written over the course of a thousand years. For the type of audience that gets off on those Olympics puff pieces where the Chinese are portrayed as opportunistic monsters who sell their children to the national team, it's a special sort of Eurocentric auto-flattery. The implication, see, is that although you're about to lose to the Chinese, they're still morally inferior to you. The Chinese, you understand, don't love their children. And they're good at math. Also, they're sexually naive, you know, because it's not like Asia is horrifically over-populated or anything. Later, a British guy quotes Keats in relation to how if truth is beauty and beauty is truth, then math must be the most beautiful thing of all. It's that kind of movie. The kind of movie with a score of industrious violin pulls and ambitious, then sad, keyboards. It has a moment where the evil dragon uncle of the Chinese mathlympians shouts, in perfect Mandarin, "What are you two doing?" and the film translates it as, "Are you in a relationship?" It's that kind of movie. You'll like it if you're that kind of person.

Fantastic Fest ’15: Yakuza Apocalypse

October 2, 20152015, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Fantastic Fest, Fantastic Fest '15, Horror, Japan, Vampire

**½/****directed by Takashi Miike by Walter Chaw Takashi Miike makes one, sometimes two, sometimes three movies a year, which is not so remarkable as the fact that they're often exceptional. He's as fecund as a Fassbender and hasn't shown signs of the same catastrophic burnout. Even his middling projects have moments in them to recommend--no less so his latest, Yakuza Apocalypse, a return to the Yakuza genre that gave him mainstream credibility (such as it was) and the supernatural horror genre that gave him cult immortality. This one isn't about anything that I could ken, really, but it is technically…

Sleeping with Other People (2015)

September 30, 20152015, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Romance, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Jason Sudeikis, Alison Brie, Adam Scott, Amanda Peet
written and directed by Leslye Headland

by Walter Chaw Massively over-written, smug, baselessly self-assured, and world-weary in the way that people who watch a lot of "Sex and the City" and "Girls" are world-weary, Leslye Headlund's rank, unwatchable Sleeping with Other People is like that date that Death goes on "Family Guy" with the girl who tells Him you can't hug your kids with nuclear arms. To say it's awful is unfair; better to say it's tedious as shit. It's a chronicle of insufferable, half-wit narcissists and, given the success of stuff like Obvious Child, hell, it's worth a try, right? Honestly, though…and no one's asking, but…wouldn't it be better to not have a career than be tied to great white albatrosses like this? Sleeping with Other People is like Diablo Cody on steroids, complete with an entire album's worth of soft-alt rock and Lilith Fair covers on the soundtrack. And much like Cody's script for Juno that has references to Soupy Sales flying from the mouths of babes, this gem has a college girl in 2002 warning a prospective beau not to reference The Graduate on learning that her name is "Elaine" when, you know, "Seinfeld". Jesus, c'mon.