Director Daniel Scheinert (Swiss Army Man) walks an amazing tight rope between hillbilly stereotype and sympathetic character study with his latest, The Death of Dick Long, a crass comedy with deeply human sensibilities.
Zeke (Michael Abbott Jr.), Earl (Andre Hyland) and Dick
(Scheinert) work on some Nickelback covers for their band, Pink Freud. Band
practice out at Zeke’s ends late, long after Zeke’s misses (Virginia Newcomb,
excellent) and their daughter (Poppy Cunningham, also excellent) head off to
bed.
The fellas get a little weird, things get out of hand and
let’s just say Pink Freud won’t be touring.
Yes, we have all witnessed films situated within the world of dive bar cocktail waitresses and their paramours. Tailer parks, mullets, giant prints of tigers, they’re all here. But what makes Dick Long kind of miraculous is how generous Scheinert, writer Billy Chew and the whole cast are with these characters.
Really, generous to a degree unseen in a comedy of this sort—which is to say, the sort of comedy built entirely on the idiocy of its white trash characters.
As Scheinert slowly unearths the details of the mystery, a
lesser filmmaker might wallow in inbred, backwoods, banjo pickin’ gags. Not
this guy. The more unseemly the subject matter, the more bare the soul.
Abbott’s inevitable vulnerability is almost alarmingly heart wrenching given
the comedic tone of the film and the actual crime committed.
Likewise, Newcomb mines her character and this situation for
something honest enough that you wonder what the hell you would do if you were
to find yourself in this situation. Her performance has the texture of a long
and comfortable relationship suddenly and irreparably busted.
Hyland’s Earl, on the other hand, is straight up hill jack
comic gold, but even this performance sidesteps broad strokes and finds a
recognizable, human soul.
There’s not a single performance in the film that isn’t a welcome surprise. And underneath it all, Dick Long reimagines small town masculinity, isolation and loneliness.
Daniel Scheinert follows up on the promise of the crowd favorite madness of Swiss Army Man with a crime caper of a wildly, weirdly different sort. I’m all for his brand of lunacy.
For those who’ve followed the Rambo franchise, Rambo:
Last Blood (please, God, please say it is so) will look familiar.
Stallone is here. The deeply brutal violence is here. The
one man against a depraved world is here. But in place of the broken heart of a
soldier mistreated and forgotten by his government, of the prodigal son
bringing US Military chickens home to roost, is something far less complex.
Rambo: Last Blood is basically Taken meets Home
Alone, only racist.
No, John Rambo isn’t turning his training on the rotting
center of the military industrial complex at home or in Burma. He’s actually a
pretty relaxed, aging cowboy on the Rambo family horse ranch in Arizona,
sharing a cordial friendship with his housekeeper and raising her teenage niece
as if she were his own.
John Rambo’s teenage daughter. Oh my God, can you imagine a
bigger nightmare?
Stallone can. Co-writing along with Matthew Cirulnick and
Dan Gordon (who’s wearing a camo vest and AK in his imdb photo), Sly shows Gabrielle
(Ybvette Monreal) exactly why adolescent girls need to squelch their own sense
of agency.
Gabrielle wants to go to Mexico to find her deadbeat dad.
She’ll be leaving for college soon and she just wants to clear the air. And so,
against Rambo’s wishes she secretly heads south of the border. And you know what’s
in Mexico?
Well, in the undulating sea of thugs, gang bangers, drug
lords, rapists and sex traffickers is a lone investigative journalist who seems
like very good people. She has three scenes.
Director Adrian Grunberg crafts a film that mercifully requires little attention to dialog as Stallone mumbles indecipherably through his own pages. The 73-year-old nabbed his second Oscar nomination for acting in 2016, revisiting the old war horse Rocky in a supporting role.
Every 30 years or so, Sylvester Stallone gives a good
performance.
Creed was three years ago.
But you don’t go to a Rambo movie for the acting! You go for the carnage, and hoo boy, Last Blood does not skimp.
People give horror a hard time because of all the slicing,
dicing, arterial spray and virgins in peril, but in nearly every instance, we
are meant to recoil at the violence. In this film, we are meant to celebrate it:
every decapitation, dismemberment, gutting, castration, every head blown clean
off a blood-spraying, still standing body is our own vicarious victory.
Earlier this year, after another mass shooting in the US, Hollywood shelved the Craig Zobel horror film The Hunt because they wanted to send a message that gun violence shouldn’t be celebrated. This weekend, they released Rambo: Last Blood.
The Hunt is the story of wealthy Americans kidnapping poor people to hunt them down, but the tables are turned and the poor people kill all the rich people.
Rambo: Last Blood, on the other hand, is a MAGA fantasy come to vivid, bloody fruition.
A tale told in bathrooms, Running with the Devil travels with The Cook (Nicolas Cage), a high ranking jefe in an international cocaine cartel.
He’s a jefe, but he’s not El Jefe. That’s Barry Pepper, as The Boss, and he has other pressing concerns. El Jefe needs The Cook to travel with his product from the farm where it’s produced through the forests, mountains, backstreets, highways and checkpoints to the hands of the dealers who sell it, so he can determine just where the other problem lies.
So while The Agent in Charge (Leslie Bibb) and Number One
(Peter Facinelli) investigate suspicious OD’s stateside, The Cook heads south
for his own form of investigation.
A word about character names. Writer/director Jason Cabell offers labels as opposed to your traditional Paul or Paulas. That would be interesting if the labels were fun or even on-the-nose, but The Cook? This isn’t meth. He actually just owns a restaurant on the side, which has nothing to do with anything, but I guess Cartel Middle Manager didn’t have the right zing.
Another word about Number One (Facinelli). This guy. He’s the trusted back up to The Agent in Charge. He’s the guy who gets stuck heading to the border to wait for the shipment. And he is the single most conspicuous person on earth. He’s like a Tom of Finland illustration come to life and dressed in JC Penney’s best.
Anyway, Cabell structures his film to draw tension and
excitement from the inevitable collision between The Cook (Cage) and The Man (Lawrence
Fishburne).
OK.
They may be borderline-geriatric badasses, but both have
certainly cut interesting cinematic figures. What can they do together?
Well, in this case, they can disappoint. You can’t lay this on Fishburne’s portrayal. His commitment to the pursuit of cocaine and prostitutes impresses.
Unfortunately, this is one of those Nic Cage movies where he doesn’t cut loose—doesn’t go all Nic Cage on you. This means he has to act, but he more or less chooses not to. You get a flash here, a flutter there, but the naked truth is that Nicolas Cage has no idea how to behave like a regular person. The Cook is too ordinary a man for Nicolas Cage to properly portray.
And without the needed distraction of a Full On Cage, it’s
tough not to notice the narrative inconsistencies, trite dialog, stupid
character names.
I mean, Facinelli does what he can with that mustache to keep your attention, but when it comes to the school of Glorious Explosive Train Wreck Acting, he’s no Nic Cage.
A perversion of childhood innocence in an attempt to create anxiety and fear—that, basically, is the definition of carnivals, circuses, theme parks. Maybe that’s why the amusement park and its inhabitants make for such excellent horror movie fodder. Let’s discuss.
5. Zombieland (2009)
Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Deadpool) take the
tried-and-true zombiepocalypse premise and sprint with it in totally new and
awesome directions. An insane cast helps: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg,
Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Bill Murray. That’s eight Oscar nominations and
one win, that’s what that is. Plus, I cannot imagine a better cameo in a film
than Murray’s in this one.
I give you, a trip to a loud and well-lit amusement park is not a
recommendation Max Brooks would make during the zombiepocalypse. Still, you’ve
got to admit it’s a gloriously filmed piece of action horror cinema.
Between the sisters trapped on a ride slowly lowering them toward hungry mouths (good thinking on those boots, ladies!), Columbus’s rule breaking heroism with that effing clown, and the all-time great Tallahassee shoot out, director Ruben Fleischer directs the hell out of the amusement park portion of this movie.
4. It (2017)
Clowns are fun, aren’t they?
The basic premise of It is this: Little kids are afraid of
everything, and that’s just good thinking.
Bill Skarsgård has the unenviable task of following a letter-perfect Tim
Curry in the role of Pennywise. Those are some big clown shoes to fill, but
Skarsgård is up to the challenge. His Pennywise is more theatrical, more of an
exploitation of all that’s inherently macabre and grotesque about clowns.
Is he better than the original? Let’s not get nutty here, but he is great.
Director Andy Muschietti shows great instinct for taking advantage of foreground, background and sound. Yes, It relies heavily on jump scares, but Muschietti’s approach to plumbing your fear has more depth than that and he manages your rising terror expertly.
3. The Last Circus (2010)
Who’s in the mood for something weird?
Unhinged Spanish filmmaker Alex de la Iglesia returns to form with The
Last Circus, a breathtakingly bizarre look at a Big Top love triangle set
in Franco’s Spain.
Describing the story in much detail would risk giving away too many of the
astonishing images. A boy loses his performer father to conscription in Spain’s
civil war, and decades later, with Franco’s reign’s end in sight, he follows in
pop’s clown-sized footsteps and joins the circus. There he falls for another
clown’s woman, and stuff gets nutty.
Like Tarantino, Igelsia pulls together ideas and images from across cinema
and blends them into something uniquely his own, crafting a film that’s
somewhat familiar, but never, ever predictable.
The Last Circus boasts more than brilliantly wrong-minded direction and stunningly macabre imagery – though of these things it certainly boasts. Within that bloody and perverse chaos are some of the more touching performances to be found onscreen.
2. Us (2019)
From a Santa Cruz carnival to a hall of mirrors to a wall of rabbits in cages, writer/director Jordan Peele draws on moods and images from horror’s collective unconscious and blends them into something hypnotic and almost primal.
But Us is far more than a riff on some old favorites. It’s as if Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland turned into a plague on humanity.
And it all starts innocently enough with a family outing to the carnival—an environment that has always been a perversion of innocence, a macabre funhouse mirror of the playthings and past times of children. Peele takes advantage, using this stage to create an even wilder and more bewildering look at who we are.
1. Freaks (1932)
Short and sweet, like most of its performers, Tod Browning’s controversial
film Freaks is one of those movies you will never forget. Populated
almost entirely by unusual actors – midgets, amputees, the physically deformed,
and an honest to god set of conjoined twins (Daisy and Violet Hilton) – Freaks
makes you wonder whether you should be watching it at all.
This, of course, is an underlying tension in most horror films, but with Freaks,
it’s right up front. Is what Browning does with the film empathetic or
exploitative, or both? And, of course, am I a bad person for watching this
film?
Well, that’s not for us to say. We suspect you may be a bad person, perhaps
even a serial killer. Or maybe that’s us. What we can tell you for sure is that
the film is unsettling, and the final, rainy act of vengeance is truly creepy
to watch.
Have you ever noticed how adorable Browns fans are during pre-season every year? Every year! There is always reason for optimism.
That’s how I feel about filmmakers with the “haunted house attraction that’ll really kill you” premise. Year after year (The Houses October Built, 2014; 31, 2016; The Houses October Built 2, 2017; Hell Fest, 2018) somebody wheels out the stinky old corpse of an idea and says, “This year, we’ll get it right!”
The 2019 attempt belongs to writers/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who struck silent film gold last year with the screenplay for A Quiet Place. (In retrospect, maybe we didn’t give co-writer/director John Krasinski enough credit for that one.)
Haunt follows a handful of college students seeking thrills on Halloween. They stumble upon an isolated haunted house attraction—with not one single visitor. On Halloween night. Kids! Come on! Clearly it’s either the lamest thing on earth or it will kill you. This isn’t rocket science.
And yet, they give up their cell phones, sign some waivers
and enter.
Katie Stevens is Harper, damaged but mainly wholesome
brunette and center of gravity for the group. Will Brittain is Nathan, pre-requisite
“will they or won’t they” nice fella who sees past Harper’s prickly exterior.
In truth, the actors playing the six gullible youths all
perform above expectation and, mercifully, Beck and Woods choose not to subject
us to the couple that just can’t keep their hands to themselves.
Made sensibly and economically, Haunt sticks to what it knows and focuses on what it came to do. Gaps in logic are few (they’re there, but they’re not distracting). One or two of the kills offer intrigue and the villains are, if not especially impressive, at least kind of fun.
It’s adequate. Unlike the Browns. The Browns are going all the way this year. No doubt. No doubt about it.
Comparing most films to Pan’s Labyrinth would be setting a bar too high. Guillermo del Toro’s macabre fable of war and childhood delivers more magic, humanity and tragedy than any one film should be allowed.
And yet, it’s hard to watch Issa Lopez’s Tigers Are Not Afraid without thinking about little Ofelia, the fairies and the Pale Man.
Lopez’s fable of children and war brandishes the same themes
as del Toro’s masterpiece, but grounds the magic with a rugged street style.
Tigers follows Estrella, a child studying fairy tales—or, she was until her school is temporarily closed due to the stray bullets that make it unsafe for students. As Estrella and her classmates hide beneath desks to avoid gunfire, her teacher hands her three broken pieces of chalk and tells her these are her three wishes.
But wishes never turn out the way you want them to.
There is an echo through Latin American horror that speaks to the idea of a disposable population. You find it in Jorge Michel Grau’s brilliant 2010 cannibal horror We Are What We Are and again in Emiliano Rocha Minter’s 2016 taboo-buster, We Are the Flesh.
Lopez amplifies that voice with a film that feels horrifying
in its currency and devastating in the way it travels with the most vulnerable
of those discarded people.
Estrella is befriended by other orphans in her city, each aching with the loss of parents and each on the move to escape the dangers facing the powerless.
Though Tigers bears the mark of a del Toro – Labyrinth as well as The Devi’s Backbone – it can’t quite reach his level of sorrowful lyricism. It makes up for that with the gut punch of modernity. Though this ghost story with tiny dragons and stuffed tigers is darkly fanciful, it’s also surprisingly clear-eyed in its view of the toll the drug war takes on the innocent.
It is tough to find a fresh direction to take fiction published
201 years ago, let alone a tale already made into countless films. Is there a new
way—or reason—to look at the Frankenstein fable?
Writer/director/horror favorite Larry Fessenden thinks so.
He tackles the myth, as well as a culture of greed and toxic masculinity, with
his latest, Depraved.
Adam (a deeply sympathetic Alex Breaux) is kind of an act of
catharsis for Henry (David Call). A PTSD-suffering combat medic, Henry is so
interested in finding a way to bring battlefield fatalities back to life that
he doesn’t even question where his Big Pharma partner Polidori (Joshua Leonard,
in another excellent genre turn) gets his pieces and parts.
Here’s a question that’s plagued me since I read Shelley’s
text in 8th grade. Why take parts of cadavers? Why not bring one
whole dude back and save all that time and stitching effort? Frank Henenlotter (Frankenhooker) and Lucky
McKee (May) found answers to that question. Fessenden isn’t worried
about it.
He’s more interested in illuminating the way a culture is
represented in its offspring. Pour all your own ugly tendencies, insecurities
and selfish behaviors into your creation and see what that gets you.
Fessenden isn’t subtle about the problems he sees in
society, nor vague about their causes. Depraved is the latest in a host of
genre films pointing fingers at the specific folks who have had the power to
cause all the problems that are now coming back to bite us in the ass.
It’s the white guys with money because, well, because it is.
Along with Leonard’s oily approach and Breaux’s tenderness, the film boasts solid supporting work from Chloe Levine (The Transfiguration, Ranger) and especially Addison Timlin, who is great in a very small role.
There is a sloppy subtext here, charming in its refusal to
be tidy, about the man Adam used to be (or one of them), the girl he didn’t
really appreciate, and the way, deep down, a mildly douchy guy can learn a
lesson about self-sacrifice.
In its own cynical way, Depraved does offer a glimmer of hope for mankind. Fessenden doesn’t revolutionize the genre or say anything new, though, but you won’t leave the film wishing Shelley’s beast would just stay dead.
