Cinema is full of lovable losers, but every so often an actor so fully inhabits a character that you can almost forget the film around him. He is no longer a disposable source of comedy or pity, but an living, breathing, bleeding human you must root for: Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Scottie in Boogie Nights, Robert De Niro’s Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy, Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso in Midnight Cowboy.
Marcello Fonte just leapt onto the list with his deeply flawed, deeply human and beautifully realized dog groomer Marcello in Matteo Garrone’s latest, Dogman.
Slight, fidgety and endlessly kind-hearted, Marcello loves his dogs, his daughter and the neighbors in his grey little seaside slum. Sure, he sells a little coke on the side, but he doesn’t want to cause any trouble.
Unfortunately for Marcello, the behemoth Simone (Edoardo
Pesce, utterly brilliant) is nothing if not a lumbering mountain of trouble.
After his darkly delightful 2015 fairy tale outing Tale of Tales, Garrone returns to the heavier Italian realism of Gomorrah. He hasn’t abandoned allegory, though.
Given his nation’s political history and current leanings,
it isn’t tough to draw metaphor from the tale of an unthinking bully and the
population who cows to him. (This is not a tough metaphor for Americans to
fathom, either.)
Not that it pulls attention away from Marcello. The film has
themes of the classic Western, a good man pushed to dark means to protect what
he has. But in this case, Marcello is an almost feminine presence among the
cash-for-gold shop or video game arcade owners who share his strip of town.
Marcello is liked, if not exactly respected.
Childlike is what he is, a pack animal but never the alpha.
As his story progresses, Garrone’s tight grip on the narrative and its visual
emphasis turn the film from that of an underdog’s struggle to something sadder
and grander.
As hope mixes with hopelessness, Dogman raises questions it never really answers, and ultimately feels wearily confused and disappointed by people.
It’s been 50 years since Charles Manson and his family effectively terminated the 1960s. Filmmaker Mary Harron (American Psycho) joins Daniel Farrands and Quentin Tarantino in commemorating the anniversary.
Earlier this year, Farrands unleashed the grim and quickly forgotten The Haunting of Sharon Tate, while Tarantino’s next likely cultural phenomenon, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, promises to shine some of its spotlight on the Manson family crimes as well.
Harron’s film, Charlie Says, follows Leslie Van Houton (Hannah Murray), Susan Atkins (Marianne Rendon) and Patricia Krenwinkle (Sosie Bacon), three years after their incarceration, as they reflect on Manson’s promises and their own actions.
The aptly titled film is as concerned with the women’s brainwashing
as it is the crimes themselves, although it unfortunately provides no real
insight into either.
Harron spends about half the film in the California Women’s Correctional Facility, where the trio is taught by dedicated grad student Karlene Faith (Merritt Wever, portraying the author of the book that inspires the film).
The eerie chorus of “Charlie says…” greets nearly every
question Wever lobs at her students, which generally spurs a flashback to time
on the ranch with Charlie (Matt Smith).
Here we hit a snag, because Smith lacks the charisma, the
hatred, the ugliness or the psychotic aura to pull of Manson. He is never terrifying,
never seductive—never convincing.
In fact, most of the flock lacks the weather beaten conviction we recognize from police tapes. The period detail and tone lack degrees of authenticity as well.
Harron’s film opens strong, but it quickly loses its footing
and never really finds it again. Working from Guinevere Turner’s screenplay,
Harron brings up some interesting themes—particularly questioning the point of
breaking through to these women, knowing that puncturing their fantasies only
means their clear-eyed horror whether looking backward or forward.
But she doesn’t really land any punches. The film never
feels particularly queasying, especially enlightening or even very memorable.
I guess we still have Tarantino. Or maybe it’s just time we all moved on and stopped obsessing over what Charlie had to say.
Here’s a fun trend in recent indie filmmaking: let’s revisit
our historic “spinsters”, shall we?
Craig William Macneill gave Lizzie Borden the treatment last year with Lizzie, offering a pretty speculative and yet decidedly clear-eyed plausibility. But Madeleine Olneck has actual history to back her up.
Plumbing Harvard University Press’s stash of Emily Dickinson’s
poems and letters, Olneck suggests a different, funnier, slyer image of the
“recluse poet.”
Wild Nights with Emily plays almost like an episode of Drunk History, although no one seems to be drunk. Olneck simulcasts two parallel retellings of the life of America’s most beloved female poet, and among its most beloved poets, regardless of sex.
Wild Nights does not disregard sex, though.
One storyline—the one you’ll recognize—is dictated by Mabel
Todd (a delightful Amy Seimetz in a rare comedic performance). As she stands in
her cotton candy pink dress and hat, she regales a rapt audience with stories
of the Emily Dickinson she knew.
Well, “knew” seems to be a strong word.
Todd was, indeed, the first to publish Dickinson’s work
aside from a stray newspaper editor here and there. And why was that? Because
Dickinson was a recluse who shunned publication, as Todd defined it and history
was so quick to embrace it?
Or because Dickinson’s rule-defying work was ignored by the
literary establishment of her time and because she shunned Todd?
The offsetting narrative explores a different view of
Dickinson, warmly and beautifully portrayed by Molly Shannon. Her relationship
with lifelong friend, expert reader, fierce proponent and sister-in-law, Susan
Gilbert (Susan Ziegler), fuels a poignant and funny story.
Is a likelier reading of Dickinson’s work and letters that
of a passionate, lifelong love affair with Gilbert? Olneck’s consistently
entertaining narrative certainly believes so.
This is a specifically political film, one that begs with
outrage that we reexamine the stories we’ve been told about women in
history—this one woman, in particular.
It’s also a mash note to the breathtaking originality and talent of the poet, whose words flow through the film without burdening it by self-importance or pretentiousness. No, Olneck’s audacious wit and Ziegler and Shannon’s performances—alongside spot on comic turns from Seimetz, Brett Gelman, Jackie Monahan and Kevin Seal—guarantee the film never bends toward anything remotely stuffy.
Instead, Wild Nights with Emily offers a refreshing and awfully entertaining new way of seeing an American treasure.
If you’re thinking Christopher Lee and blood-drinking, virgin-sacrificing minions planning to summon demons forth and end humankind, well, you’re not alone. But you are off the mark.
And while I’m not sure documentarian Penny Lane intended recruitment with her film Hail Satan?, it’s really hard not to find yourself rooting for this scrappy group of idealists.
Lane and her subjects trace a brief history of Satanic grotesquerie in America. From Anton Lavey’s psychedelic Church of Satan (“a rat pack carnival”) to the “Satanic Panic” of the 80s and 90s through the abominable behavior inside the Catholic Church, the film notes how the devil has been used in American popular culture.
But for TST, “Satanism” is simply a way to rework a pejorative
term used historically to mark the outsider—a group to which members certainly relate.
Lucien Greaves (a pseudonym) devoted himself to establishing The Satanic Temple as a simple societal outgrowth, a tumor, if you will, on the ass of a state of Christian theocracy he saw in our country. He doesn’t worship Satan. He doesn’t even believe in Satan.
Greaves believes in the religious pluralism promised by the US Constitution, and what better way to convince a state house to remove its ten commandments statue than to insist on the erection of an 8 foot statue of Baphomet on the same lawn? Because, as far as the laws of the US are concerned, if you can’t have one, you can’t have the other.
Lane documents the organization’s growth from theatrical
political activist cell to global network of connected communities. Her wry
delivery matches the sensibilities of the Satanists in question, but their
outrage and their unexpected sense of community fuel the film.
As Lane’s investigation uncovers, The Satanic Temple’s surprising surge in popularity owes itself not just to a citizenry troubled by a sudden swing toward theocracy. It’s also due to the organization’s ability to represents a unified voice for outcasts.
Those very people most vilified by a conservative
“Christian” point of view find acceptance here. And while there may be no better way for them to
stick it to their oppressors, this is also their opportunity to make a
difference.
If the point of a documentary is to enlighten while it entertains, few docs have succeeded on both fronts as entirely as Hail Satan? In turns frustrating, funny and provocative, it is always a clear-eyed image of America as defined by our citizen’s imperative to challenge our government to better realize the ideals of our Constitution.
What to watch this week? Well, please start with the best documentary to be released in ages, then hit on a criminally underseen music biopic. After that, the choosing gets tougher, but let us be a guide.
Horror has a love/hate relationship with hippies. I suppose most of us do. And while some of the greatest films in the genre were made by Sixties freaks George Romero, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper and the like, most of the time hippies’ onscreen representation got wrapped up in Manson hysteria.
5. Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972)
Full disclosure: George objects to including this film on the list. It’s not good.
But it’s not good in such a good way! Director Bob Clark (Black Christmas, A Christmas Story) and writer/co-star Alan Ormsby seem basically to be taking out their frustrations at being part of the theatrical community.
Ormsby’s Alan is a director, and he drags his troupe of hippie thespians to a lonely island once used to bury the criminally insane. He then insists—if they ever want to work with him again—that his merry band dig up a body and perform a ritual to bring him back to life.
It’s basically theater kids making fun of theater kids. Watching a group of actors being literally eaten alive by their audience is its own stoke of genius, even if the film itself is not.
4. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
In this Age of Aquarius riff on J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampire novel Carmilla, the unfortunately titled Let’s Scare Jessica to Death follows a somewhat delicate woman through what amounts to either a nervous breakdown or the seduction of a female vampire.
A married couple and their organic farmer friend move into an old, abandoned house on a New England island. They find a vagrant—long haired, pretty, can play an acoustic guitar, natch—and they ask her to stay. Why not?
Deliberately paced and boasting a genuine and sympathetic performance by lead Zohra Lampert, the film’s a slow burn, a hallucinogenic smalltown horror. The creepy townies, the spooky cemetery girl, and the moody cinematography blend with Lampert’s committed performance to make this one a dusty little gem.
3. I Drink Your Blood (1970)
David Durston’s grindhouse classic (in which no one drinks anyone’s blood, regardless of what this lying trailer tells you) marks that great divide in hippie horror: those made by and about hippies and those made by opportunists seizing upon a population’s terrified fascination with the Manson Family murders.
I Drink Your Blood is the latter. We open on a group of hippie Satan worshippers who turn out to be gang rapists. They descend on a little town almost empty of inhabitants—the menfolk all having moved to live and work in the nearby mining camp. That leaves just that scrappy family working in the bakery.
But once young, vindictive Pete injects the baker’s meat pies with rabid dog blood, them no goodnicks might learn some manners.
Actually, that’s the last thing they’ll do.
This is an extremely violent film, not very well made and certainly not well acted. It has a punch, though, and several scenes are provocative enough to warrant its inclusion on this list.
2. Mandy (2018)
A hallucinogenic fever dream of social, political and pop-culture subtexts layered with good old, blood-soaked revenge, Mandy throws enough visionary strangeness on the screen to dwarf even Nicolas Cage in full freakout mode.
Red (Cage) and Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) live a secluded, lazily contented life somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.
That contentment is shattered by a radical religious sect under the spell of Jeremiah (Linus Roache), who takes a liking to Mandy when the group’s van (of course it’s a van!) passes her walking on a country road.
Horror of the late 60s and early 70s saw hippies terrorizing good, upright citizens, perpetrating cult-like nastiness. Thanks to Charles Manson, society at large saw the counterculture as an evil presence determined to befoul conventional, Christian wholesomeness.
With Mandy, it’s as if the 70s and 80s have collided, mixing and matching horror tropes and upending all conceivable suppositions. In this case, zealots consumed with only the entitlement of their white, male leader wreak havoc on good, quiet, earth-loving people. The Seventies gave us some amount of progress, civil justice and peace that the Eighties took back under the guise of decency.
1.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Hippie pals pile into a van and head to Texas to double check that Grammy and Gamps still rest in peace, what with these rumors of grave robbing. Along the way they talk astrology, smoke some weed, pick up a hitchhiker–it’s all in a day’s journey for a hippie.
That hitchhiker thing goes sideways. In fact, the whole trip feels like a bad idea by the time pretty Sally Hardesty and her friends make a second trip to the cemetery. Well, what’s left of them.
A lot of new movies opening in Edgame’s aftermath. We talk through the good, the bad, the ugly, the missable and what’s new in home entertainment, including Long Shot, UglyDolls, The Intruder, Her Smell, The River and the Wall and Ask Dr. Ruth.
We open on what is essentially the Island of Misfit Toys. This is the moment when the adults in the UglyDolls audience need to make a choice: accept these notions stolen from far superior toy-related children’s fare as homages, or bristle at inferior product skating by on copy-catting.
It’s your choice, but your kids will mainly see a perfectly
sweet, upbeat and unimaginative tale of an ugly duckling. Even better, an ugly
duckling who doesn’t need to become a swan to be happy.
That duck, or that blobby pink thing, is Moxy (voiced by Kelly
Clarkson). And she lives happily in Uglyville with other merrily misshapen
beasties (Wanda Sykes, Blake Shelton, Pitbull, Leehom Wang, Gabriel Iglesias).
But Moxie yearns for more.
On a songtastic adventure to fulfill her dream, Moxy and gang run afoul of the pretty dolls, whose leader, Lou (Nick Jonas) intends to keep them from finding the boy or girl who will love them.
Will that stop Moxy? No! She yearns for her very own Andy.
I feel safe in saying that because there’s no question director Kelly Asbury (Shrek 2) and screenwriter Alison Peck (working with characters created by Su-min Kim and David Horvath) have seen Toy Story.
Man, that was a good movie, eh? The whole series, actually. In fact, there’s one scene in Toy Story 3 that made me cry harder than any scene in any film ever. It obviously made an impact on Asbury and Peck as well, because it is lifted shamelessly for the emotional climax of UglyDolls.
When it’s not distracting you with its borderline plagiarism, UglyDolls is sledgehammering its theme. Janelle Monáe voices Mandy, a pretty doll who might be ugly deep down (a good thing). She helps beat the point home that we do not need to conform to be happy. Which is a great theme, and one that a well-made film (like, say, Shrek) can deliver without losing sight of storytelling.
The big screen leap for these critters amounts to a sweetly mediocre marketing strategy for some unattractive (but lovable!) toys.
“Give them enough rope and they will do it themselves.”
Apt lines from Alex Ross Perry’s new rock and roll meltdown, Her Smell.
You may think you’ve seen “Behind the Music” style
self-destruction, but you have never seen anything quite like this.
And how great is that title?!
Writer/director Perry has a soft spot for unlikeable people. That is the most common element running through his work—Color Wheel, Listen Up Philip, Queen of Earth. So it’s no huge shock that he hasn’t made a profitable film yet. That’s a tough sell: come spend 90 minutes—or in the case of Her Smell, 144 minutes—with someone you’ll have a tough time tolerating.
Which is not to say Perry makes bad movies. He makes really good movies, they just try your patience. Her Smell has a couple of things going for it, though.
First of all, there’s train wreck appeal. Becky Something (a ferocious Elisabeth Moss) is so outrageously tough to love that you cannot look away from the downward spiral Perry dares you to witness.
The second and most important strength is Moss’s stellar
turn as Something, a rocker facing the inevitable consequence of drug abuse,
pathological insecurity and the shifting dynamics of the music world.
The film itself is a dizzying, self-indulgent mess, which
only seems appropriate. Sean Price Williams’s restless camera captures it all.
All of it. All all all. And Moss’s toxic, mascara-smeared maniac is such a
loathsome explosion, you almost wish rock bottom would come, already.
Uncharacteristic of the filmmaker, though, regret and
redemption color the film’s second half. It’s here that Moss’s rawness and the
deeply felt character work from her supporting cast (an especially wonderful
Agyness Deyn, in particular) repay you for the abuse you’ve taken for more than
an hour.
The music itself—much of it, anyway—is the film’s real weakness. But Moss, who has more than proven her mettle in basically every role she’s ever taken, is more than fearless here. She is bare, ugly authenticity and there is something transcendent about sticking it out with her.
