Barton Fink

BARTON FINK (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 1991)

New York playwright Barton Fink (John Turturro) is fresh off a stage success in 1941 when Hollywood comes calling. Barton fancies himself as working toward a new theater for the common man, but he is reluctantly drawn to accept an opportunity that can help to finance much more of what he really wants to do. In BARTON FINK studio executive Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner) couldn’t be more enthusiastic about hiring this writer in to bring his special touch to the pictures, but Barton soon learns he’s not going to be working on anything highbrow. Jack assigns him to pen a wrestling B-movie starring Wallace Beery and wants a screenplay by week’s end.

For his time in Los Angeles Barton strives to abide by his principles, choosing to take residence in the ramshackle Hotel Earle than the swankier places where the studio could put him up. Driven to distraction by the noise from the neighboring room, Barton complains to the front desk, resulting in Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), the traveling insurance salesman next door, to come by to apologize. Charlie is a friendly guy, and he makes it a habit to drop by Barton’s room when he fears him enter. Although Barton wants to work, he has a hard time rejecting Charlie’s company. Anyway, he’s in state of paralysis in which he can’t get past describing the film’s first scene.

BARTON FINK unspools like the spiritual predecessor to last year’s Coen brothers’ film HAIL, CAESAR! Although they take place ten years apart, both are set at the fictional Capital Studios and initiate existential crises in their main characters. Barton’s most obvious conflict is an ill-timed case of writer’s block, but what brings it on is harder to pin down. Is he simply out of his element in a different medium? Can he not write because he thinks the work is beneath me, or is he not as in touch with the common man he reveres? The film is too slippery to identify as being about one particular thing. Stylistically it’s a supremely weird combination of satire, horror, film noir, and religious allegory. Still, at its core is the despair of not being able to escape the one’s own mind.

The aphorism of indeterminate origin “no matter where you go, there you are” succinctly describes Barton’s predicament. BARTON FINK puts forward that the writer might occupy a literal fiery furnace, one that makes the wallpaper glue drip and the decorative surfaces peel. It seems significant that the film begins and ends with shots of the wallpaper, the sort of thing one can’t look away from or would stare at while trying to pump ideas out of a dry mental well. Yet it’s just as plausible that the heat Barton feels is stoked by his own feelings of impostor-like inadequacy.

For all of the esteem Barton expresses for the common man, he doesn’t listen to the one in his midst. Charlie, a fellow as affable as they get, struggles to get a word in edgewise, and when he does, Barton doesn’t listen. A solution to his problem is right in front of him, but Barton is so preoccupied with what’s rattling around his skull that he can’t spot it. That grand cosmic joke stretches across Joel and Ethan Coen’s films. The suffering person’s inability to save themselves is a grand cosmic joke that stretches across Joel and Ethan Coen’s films. It’s darker in BARTON FINK, in part because the writer embraces that pain as if it is inherently holy.

Grade: B+

Ingrid Goes West

INGRID GOES WEST (Matt Spicer, 2017)

INGRID GOES WEST begins with a distraught Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) crying as she scrolls through the bubbly Instagram posts her friend Charlotte (Meredith Hagner) makes from her wedding. Ingrid wasn’t invited, so she crashes the reception and maces Charlotte before being dragged off. Although it appears that this was a friendship that soured, in reality they barely know one another. Charlotte just happened to comment on one of Ingrid’s posts, leading the obsessive social media user to stalk her as though they were besties.

After a period of institutionalization, Ingrid returns home as isolated and lonely as ever now that her mother has died. Without any supervision, she reverts to bad behaviors and seeks a new person to fixate on. Ingrid zeroes in on photographer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen). When she receives a tidbit of validation from her new target, Ingrid decides to use the money she inherited to move to California and hunt down her new best friend.

Make no mistake, Ingrid definitely has unresolved mental health issues, but the running joke in this dark comedy is that Taylor’s narcissism allows the distorted but symbiotic relationship to flourish. The “friendship” is mutually beneficial because it’s one-sided on both sides. Ingrid affirms everything Taylor says and does. She’s a mirror rather than a friend, but being like this gets Ingrid close to Taylor, which is all she wants. Taylor gets her ego stroked by someone who’s like the physical manifestation of her fawning Instagram mentions. Each person in the relationship matters only in the sense of what they reflect.

INGRID GOES WEST is savvy to the nuances of social media and smartphone usage. Not muting her phone’s keyboard provides an early indication of Ingrid’s pathology. Ingrid’s responses to posts are intended to seem casual but are in fact the result of several drafts that have her sweating over the least threatening way to indicate laughter without coming across as needy or deranged. Although writer-director Matt Spicer and co-writer David Branson Smith savagely dissect social media usage, they aren’t alarmists. When people are feeling more disconnected and superfluous, they identify the fundamental appeal of platforms that allow us to transmit idealized versions of ourselves and feel as though we are loved. How social media can be used isn’t a disease but a symptom.

If INGRID GOES WEST expresses contempt for anything, it is the predatory element that can drive the conversation. Taylor catches Ingrid’s eye because a magazine article pegs her as the new girl crush for readers. She’s not presented as someone who is interesting for whatever merits she has but as a trophy of sorts or this year’s product model to acquire. Conversely, Taylor’s persona is constructed on falsehoods that lay traps. Although purportedly a photographer, her real job is as an influencer. She’s paid to promote goods and services as though she’s sharing her tastes.

INGRID GOES WEST’s cast brings a pointed sense of humor to a world in which getting to know someone only goes as deep as creeping on their social media posts and lists of likes. Plaza tends to specialize in characters who are funny because they are so prickly. Part of the fun of her as Ingrid comes in how she disguises that aloofness and when she lets it show. For all of Ingrid’s purposeful and questionable actions, Plaza shows how this young woman is ultimately very naïve because most of her personal interactions are mediated through technology. O’Shea Jackson Jr. lends sweetness to the film as Ingrid’s incessantly vaping, BATMAN-obsessed landlord and sort-of boyfriend. Olsen is very funny exaggerating Taylor’s vapidity. The humor and horror of INGRID GOES WEST comes not from being a cautionary tale but the observation that, to a large extent, this is how we live now.

Grade: A-

Barking Dogs Never Bite (Flandersui Gae)

BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE (FLANDERSUI GAE) (Bong Joon-ho, 2000)

A yappy little dog somewhere in the big apartment complex irritates the unemployed Yun-ju (Lee Sung-jae) to no end in the South Korean dark comedy BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE. When Yun-ju finds what he believes to be the offending canine, he disposes of it. To his dismay, he learns that he got rid of the wrong dog and now must abduct and kill another. Even worse, his pregnant wife brings home a dog to dote on.

Bookkeeper Hyun-nam (Bae Doona) takes note of the increase in residents wanting her to approve flyers about their missing dogs. From a distance she is horrified to spot Yun-ju tossing one off a building. Hyun-nam is also determined to bring him to justice for this because the fame in catching him to justice may provide financial rewards. A janitor (Byun Hee-bong) for the buildings doesn’t mind coming across these dead dogs because he can add them to the soup he makes in the basement.

BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE has a twisted sense of humor that will undoubtedly offend some viewers’ sensibilities. The film opens with a statement that no animals were hurt in its making, and it t is not graphic in depicting the ends the unfortunate pooches meet. Nevertheless, the premise and some images are likely to be upsetting to some prospective audience members. For those who can get past such obstacles, director and co-writer Bong Joon-ho provides a series of inventively funny scenarios, whether from misunderstandings, pushing the boundaries of good taste, or a combination. Sometimes he applies a live-action cartoon style, particularly during foot chases, which helps to cue that the film intends for it be received with a lighter tone despite the darker comedy.

As Bong’s debut feature, BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE is marked with first film shortcomings. It takes awhile to settle into its unhurried pace. Scenes often unspool deliberately rather than with a flurry of jokes, highlighting his ability to craft individual moments and struggle to connect them meaningfully. The film finds a rhythm that makes sense in the larger picture--it is, to some degree, about the experience of time when stuck personally and professionally--but the storytelling can breed impatience. There’s a brashness to the film’s risks that feel somewhat like a young filmmaker determining what he can get away with, although to Bong’s credit, the film doesn’t play as a work of meaningless provocation.

Economic and social concerns underpin BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE that may be more immediately obvious to native audiences or those who saw it during its initial release. The satirical elements linking it with the novel A DOG OF FLANDERS and commenting on the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s were lost in translation for me to a point, which may be why the dramatic turns feel grafted onto the back stretch. Yun-ju is demoralized by his trouble finding a job as a professor. He’s further disenchanted that he only catches a break via an acquaintance’s accidental demise and his ability to submit a bribe to the dean. Hyun-nam and her friend bank the improvement of their stations in life on the turn of the century equivalent of going viral. Unlike the dogs that people lavish unconditional love on, these characters feel like strays. BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE thus casts a hard look at why the cruelty visited upon the animals is so shocking while comparative treatment to humans goes ignored.

Grade: B-

T2 Trainspotting

T2 TRAINSPOTTING (Danny Boyle, 2017)

Twenty years after stealing money from his friends in TRAINSPOTTING and absconding to Amsterdam, Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) returns to Edinburgh, Scotland. The death of his mother in T2 TRAINSPOTTING brings Mark home after such a long time gone, but he decides to revisit his old pals while he’s back in town. The intervening years have not treated them well. Daniel “Spud” Murphy (Ewen Bremner) continues to struggle regularly with a heroin addiction. Simon (Jonny Lee Miller) has switched up the drug that has him hooked these days, and he indulges in it in the time between running a failing pub and blackmailing the men he entraps with the help of Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova), a Bulgarian woman who sees herself as more business partner than girlfriend. Francis Begbie (Robert Carlyle) is serving a long-term prison sentence, which is to Mark’s benefit until the volatile Scot escapes. Despite what he says, Mark’s life isn’t substantially better than theirs.

Although Mark provides restitution to Simon for what he took two decades ago, Simon still smarts at the betrayal. He intends to gain his revenge by rekindling his friendship with Mark, teaming up on a business venture, and then ruin him. Mark’s reunion with Spud resulted in saving him from killing himself. Now Mark hopes to supplant his friend’s harmful addiction with a healthier one. Meanwhile, Begbie returns to his old ways and looks forward to having his son join him in his illegal pursuits.

In TRAINSPOTTING twentysomething junkies Mark and Simon talked about the brief window in life when you have “it” and then “it” is gone. They’re speaking in regard to musicians, actors, and athletes, but they could just as well be referring to their future selves. Their lives were certainly nothing spectacular then, but through the gloom of their unsatisfactory present in T2 TRAINSPOTTING and the fog of nostalgia, that period looks like their heyday. As a young adult Simon believes that everyone accumulates years and can’t hack it anymore. He’s correct in the sense that if you choose to live by such a philosophy, what a drag it is getting old.

So the characters wallow in their self-pity and self-destructiveness, striving to regain what mostly wasn’t so great the first time around. They return to bad habits, make many of the same mistakes, and, incidentally, have their share of good times. In both films director Danny Boyle shows what could attract them to such wasting-away lifestyles and sets their zonked-out bliss to pulsing soundtracks. It doesn’t look like my idea of fun, but Boyle succeeds at showing the attraction even as he offsets it with ample scenes illustrating the high costs.

T2 TRAINSPOTTING isn’t as joyful as its predecessor and appropriately so. However misguided, there’s more romance in youth being careless than middle-aged men behaving the same way. While this lot has often decided poorly, Boyle and screenwriter John Hodge place these choices within the context of the economic limitations in their surroundings. It’s not an excuse, but it is a symptom. As Boyle does frequently in T2 TRAINSPOTTING, the thrilling final sequence juxtaposes the past and the present. It also bookends the films with Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life”. While a lot hasn’t changed for the character as the remixed track roars, there are some differences to give hope that maybe the past won’t always be repeated.

Grade: B+

Faults

FAULTS (Riley Stearns, 2014)

If Dr. Ansel Roth (Leland Orser) hasn’t hit rock bottom as FAULTS begins, he doesn’t have much farther to fall. He gets booted from a hotel restaurant for trying to use an already-redeemed meal voucher he fished out of the trash. Presumably just about everything he owns fits into his compact hatchback, including the boxes of books he schleps to his speaking events in hotel meeting rooms. Ansel is an expert on mind control and cults, but the suicide of a woman he tried to deprogram cost him a television show, his wife, and virtually everything else of value.

He’s so tired of his specialty and the point it has brought him to that he initially declines an opportunity to assist a middle-aged couple (Chris Ellis and Beth Grant) who are desperate to break the grip a cult named Faults has on their 28-year-old daughter. When his agent demands repayment of a large sum of money or else, Ansel reluctantly agrees to perform the expensive deprogramming work. He is upfront with the parents that the success rate is just fifty percent. He and two hired hands abduct Claire (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) from a grocery store parking lot. They take her to a motel room where, over five days, Ansel will attempt to weaken and sever the cult’s hold on her.

As Ansel is at wit’s end, he’s not exactly in the best state of mind to be facing off against someone with a newfound sense of inner strength. Naturally Claire is concerned about being snatched in public and kept captive, but it could be argued that she is better suited to withstand the immediate strains in the situation than her counselor. For all of his personal shortcomings, FAULTS shows Ansel to be professionally skilled, if somewhat of a bumbler. Writer-director Riley Stearns makes clear the seriousness of what’s at stake but uses a darkly comedic sensibility to toy with Ansel’s dignity. The scenario seems more fraught with danger because of the doctor’s vulnerability, not the patient’s.

To breed trust, Ansel alternates periods of intense discussion with restful time for Claire to reconnect with her parents. FAULTS also takes pauses so Ansel can address the increasing pressure he’s getting to set things right with his agent. Such moments are important in the process of bringing him even lower, but they don’t function so much as necessary releases from the tension but as interruptions. FAULTS rivets when Ansel and Claire duel in their cat-and-mouse confidence game, not quite knowing which is gaining the upper hand. The other stuff matters but is established well enough that returning to it isn’t essential.

A cult leader strives to strip a person of self-assurance and prior relationships and then take the place of what has been removed. A deprogrammer is essentially doing the same in reverse by attempting to clear away the cult-inspired certainty and connections so as to reestablish healthy foundation. Orser and Winstead’s performances convey the mental forces in opposition, with Ansel trying to weaken Claire’s defenses while her resistance rubs against the spots where he is exposed. Although Ansel is trying to present a rational, empathetic appearance, Orser plays him tightly coiled. The line between his suggestibility and his patient’s is narrow. Orser wears the demeaned nature of the character that can make it funny that Ansel is the one trying to eliminate someone else’s dysfunction.

Winstead brings a serene air to Claire that shows her capable of compliance as the circumstances demand yet not willing to yield her agency to the man aiming to shatter and reform how she views the world. In light of her role in 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE, which opened two years after FAULTS debuted on the festival circuit, Winstead’s Claire stands as a fascinating variation of the woman held against her will. Both characters generate power in maintaining the impression of assenting to their antagonists’ commands, but watch out when the facade ruptures.

Grade: B-

The King of Comedy

THE KING OF COMEDY (Martin Scorsese, 1982)

Ray Charles sings “Come Rain or Come Shine” over the opening credits of THE KING OF COMEDY, but in the context of this dark comedy the singer’s promise to love the listener as no one ever has sounds more like a threat. It certainly is later in the film when Masha (Sandra Bernhard), who helps aspiring comedian Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) kidnap a late night talk show host, warbles it to the celebrity held captive in her townhouse. Passion can just as easily be indicative of derangement as deep affection.

34-year-old Rupert is among the crowd of autograph hounds and gawkers that hangs outside the the exit of the late night network talk show Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) hosts. Rupert isn’t so much interested in obtaining a signature as he is in bending the ear of his idol and convincing him to book the unknown talent on the show. One night he helps to push the adoring mob away from Jerry and slips into his car along with him. Jerry is gracious enough to humor his intense fan’s wish to talk with him, which leads Rupert to believe he’s so very close to becoming his industry equal.

Emboldened by his brief chat with Jerry, Rupert goes about arranging the remainder of what he needs for his rapid rise to the top. He asks out Rita (Diahnne Abbott), the high school crush he could never ask out until now, and envisions her becoming his bride in a nationally televised ceremony. He hounds the patient receptionist and production staff at Jerry’s show thinking that his showcase slot is a formality that hasn’t yet been finalized. When Rupert’s fantasies face resistance by reality, he enlists fellow obsessive Masha to abduct Jerry and then uses knowledge of the host’s whereabouts as leverage to get time to perform his act on the show.

Director Martin Scorsese depicts Rupert’s delusions so that there is often initial confusion in scenes between what is happening in the material world and what takes place in his mind. His three-piece suits and heavily rehearsed behavior--he’s never not “on”--obscure the pathology behind his striving. Rupert is so convinced of his imminent success that in his basement he has cardboard cutouts of famous folks and a studio audience with whom he can regale with his jokes and anecdotes on the talk show circuit. He’s even practiced his autograph. There’s not a question in his mind of if he’ll make it but when.

At this point in his career De Niro could be seen as a dangerous screen presence, but the intimidation emanating from him as Rupert is psychological than physical. He nails the way someone who is overly familiar and misinterprets social niceties can be unnerving. De Niro plays Rupert as though he’s living in an everlasting lucid dream in which he can tailor actual circumstances according to the vivid reality in his head. Eventually Rupert takes more aggressive actions to put imagination and existence in agreement, but before then he still has an unsettling quality because he’s oblivious to accepted standards of conduct.

The barriers to fame are lower now than they were when THE KING OF COMEDY was made, but Paul D. Zimmerman’s screenplay anticipates how notoriety alone is often spun into prominence in the media and public gazes. Rupert’s statement that it’s “better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime” sounds like a guiding aphorism for those willing to demean themselves for a brief time in the spotlight than to suffer obscurity, the worst of fates. THE KING OF COMEDY is an uncomfortably funny film not because Rupert’s desire to make everyone stand up and notice him is so foreign but because it’s recognizable, even to those would never go to his lengths to achieve everyone’s attention.

Grade: A

Killer Joe

KILLER JOE (William Friedkin, 2011)

Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) has little time remaining to repay six thousand bucks to some bad men or else he’ll be killed.  Desperate to remedy the matter, he approaches his similarly broke father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) with a solution.  His mother Adele, Ansel’s ex-wife, has a $50,000 life insurance policy to which Chris’ younger sister Dottie (Juno Temple) is the sole beneficiary.  All they need to do to set their personal finances straight is hire Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a Dallas Police Department detective who kills people on the side, to bump off Adele.

After agreeing to split the money four ways--Ansel insists his wife Sharla (Gina Gershon) gets a cut--they’re ready to put the plan in motion except for one minor problem.  They can’t pay Joe $25,000 for the service they want him to render until they get the claim check.  Joe is prepared to break off a business agreement with them, but he has his cold blue eyes fixed on Dottie and proposes they give her to him as a retainer.

The world according to KILLER JOE is a scuzzy Texas trailer park where the family plots to kill one member for a windfall and will pimp out another to make it possible.  The innocent in the middle is a weary girl already so jaded by what life’s dealt her that she signs off on her mother’s murder and embraces being sold to a contract killer because he shows interest in her.  The only person following a code is a moonlighting hit man. Say what you will about his ideas of right and wrong, but at least it’s an ethos.  

Transcending basic instincts is unimaginable when choices are guided entirely by the reptilian brain.  The stupid and venal characters in KILLER JOE cast fun house mirror reflections of a society seeking its best interests while excluding accepted principles. Director William Friedkin and screenwriter Tracy Letts, adapting his play, place the bad behavior in a dark comedy about the depths of depravity.  Like Wile E. Coyote assured that this time he’ll catch The Road Runner, Hirsch plays Chris as someone who thinks he’s smarter than he really is and has the bruises to show for his lack of good judgment. Church’s slack-jawed caricature of Ansel amuses as he serves as lunkheaded lackey to Chris’ would-be mastermind.  Gershon draws laughs with the brazen disrespect she shows her husband and stepson.

Temple interprets Dottie as a tarnished angel in seek of salvation however it may come. Acting younger and simpler than her character’s years would signify--her bed teems with stuffed animals, and the bedroom door is decorated with teen idol magazine headshots of Justin Bieber, 3RD ROCK FROM THE SUN-era Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and others--Temple reveals the glimmers of youthful goodness that, if permitted to flourish, might emerge from this hellhole.  There’s no tragedy in the other Smiths’ bumblings, but her light hasn’t been snuffed out entirely yet.

McConaughey is funny and fearsome in the title role, the devil holding the family accountable for their choices.  Despite Joe’s capacity for violence, McConaughey presents him as the pragmatic businessman and courtly gentleman.  When he drops the cool reserve and southern civility in the intense final act, KILLER JOE produces a reckoning to make the unbelieving wish for divine intervention.  Under the sun’s pounding rays and the night’s garish neon and fluorescent lights, there’s no hiding from one’s actions in this provocative and wickedly humorous film

Grade: B

Bernie

BERNIE (Richard Linklater, 2011)

Assistant funeral director Bernie Tiede (Jack Black), subject of the true-crime comedy BERNIE, is one of the most popular people in the small east Texas town of Carthage.  He’s good at his job and goes beyond the call of duty in following up with new widows to see that they’re getting along OK.  He’s active in church, community theater, and civic organizations.  He’s generous in giving time, money, and knowledge to those requiring help.  

Bernie is so beloved that townsfolk refuse to believe he’s guilty of shooting Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine) four times in the back, storing her corpse in a deep freeze, and lying about her whereabouts for months even after he confesses.  If he did do it, she probably had it coming anyway.  Despite the evidence against Bernie, district attorney Danny Buck Davidson (Matthew McConaughey) is at a loss how he can get a conviction.

Why would the local populace consider Bernie blameless?  In addition to being the richest woman in town, Marjorie was probably the most disliked.  She had not been on speaking terms for a long time with a sister who lived in Carthage.  She communicated with her son on rare occasions.  People in the area had the impression that she thought she was better than everyone else.
       
Bernie and Marjorie were already the talk of the town before the 81-year-old widow’s death at her 39-year-old companion’s hands.  Although he was no stranger to visiting women who’d lost their husbands, Bernie showed extra attention to Marjorie.  She repaid him with gifts far more lavish than anyone thought her capable of giving.  Gossips speculated on who was seducing who.  Before long Bernie and Marjorie were going on trips to New York City and international destinations.  She gave him access to her finances and made him the sole heir to her vast estate.  For all of this Bernie was subject to Marjorie’s beck and call.

With facts that are stranger than fiction and a story surrounding a murder that is often played as dark comedy, BERNIE exists somewhere between an Errol Morris documentary and FARGO.  In lesser hands the resulting film might be terribly offensive, but director Richard Linklater, who co-wrote the screenplay with Skip Hollandsworth, walks a fine line that observes the absurdity around the crime without making light of its consequences.  Nothing’s funny about an old woman getting killed.  Plenty is about the community that gleefully speculates about what happened but willfully ignores what is known.

Linklater mixes the fictionalized recreation of events with documentary-like interviews of town residents to create a version of the story through their eyes.  Whether it’s their homespun stereotyping of parts of the state or judgments leapt to from rumors about personal actions, their perception of reality is so ingrained that nothing can persuade them that the truth is otherwise.  Since the people are sympathetic toward Bernie, the film tends to be as well.  Still, for all of the information that is on the record, the two individuals in the middle of all the chatter remain mysteries.

Black dials down his usual routine and turns in one of his best performances.  The part is a perfect fit in which he can play off his everyman likability and musical talents to build someone who enchants everyone with whom he comes in contact.  From what we’re permitted to see Bernie is not a complex character and purposefully so since he’s constructed from how everyone regards him.  To his credit, Black’s expert portrayal of this friendly naïf makes it hard to dislike Bernie even after he kills Marjorie.  Maybe Bernie is a virtuoso con man--one of his community theater roles is Harold Hill in THE MUSIC MAN--but the impulse is to want to give him some benefit of the doubt.      

McConaughey is a hoot as the showboating DA who provides the voice of reason amid the media carnival.  Wearing glasses, a cowboy hat, and a tie he sometimes uses to wipe his mouth, he plays up his salt of the earth credibility to cast suspicion on Bernie’s cultured ways.

Typically Linklater’s films find him operating in a philosophical mode that encourages contemplating why and how we know what we know.  With BERNIE he humorously explores what happens when those questions aren’t asked.  In the movies it’s funny when empirical belief becomes so rigid that first impressions can’t be altered.  It isn’t when justice is at stake.

Grade: B+

Four Lions

FOUR LIONS (Chris Morris, 2010)

Comedies don’t get any nervier than director Chris Morris’s FOUR LIONS, which is built on the exploits of bumbling Islamic terrorists in a cell near London. By all appearances the group’s levelheaded leader Omar (Riz Ahmed) wouldn’t be involved with such a bunch. He has a comfortable middle class life with a loving wife and admiring son, yet there he is telling a bedtime story attempting to recast THE LION KING as a tale of jihad and groaning over the numerous outtakes from videos supposed to present them as fearsome ideological warriors.

Omar and the easily malleable Waj (Kayvan Novak) depart England for a training camp in Pakistan, but they make a hasty return home after demonstrating their ineptitude with artillery. During their absence, Barry (Nigel Lindsay), a blowhard incapable of keeping a low profile, meets a kindred spirit in Hassan (Arsher Ali), who tries to make a point about prejudice toward Muslims by pretending to be strapped with explosives at an Islamic relations panel. Barry invites Hassan to join him and the sheepish Fessal (Adeel Akhtar) in plotting some kind of attack.

The desire to put belief into action becomes more urgent when Omar and Waj reconnect with the others. They just need to determine the proper target, and no, it won’t be the mosque, no matter how much Barry insists that blowing it up will inflame their spiritual brothers to fight the heathens.

FOUR LIONS is merciless in its mission to find humor where few would dare seek it. Morris and co-writers Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain, and Simon Blackwell present these modern boogeymen as buffoons and hold them up to ridicule for their vanity and tortured logic. The film’s point is neatly summarized in the scene with Omar contorting himself to convince his confused accomplice Waj that killing innocent civilians and themselves to promote their cause is a good thing that he wants to do. From an outside perspective, such talk would sound clearly insane, and it’s not simply because individual bombers in the group are dressed as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and a guy riding an ostrich. In letting the characters accept such philosophical views as wise and noble, Morris and company highlight the absurdity of these positions to devastating comedic ends.

It may not seem very risky for the filmmakers to take potshots at terrorists. Who’s going to object? In FOUR LIONS the courage comes in putting front and center the disquieting notion that terrorism is as simple as any group of fools with the ability and desire to assemble and detonate rudimentary bombs. It’s easy enough to find the hilarity in those who would do us harm hurting themselves. It’s something quite different to be reminded that militaries and intelligence agencies aren’t necessarily fighting brilliant or deeply pocketed opponents. FOUR LIONS allows the audience to laugh at these dimwits, which has enormous cathartic power, yet in not sparing the deadly consequences of their beliefs and actions, the film adds an extra layer of resonance regarding what’s at stake in this clash of worldviews.

Boldness in and of itself in a comedy doesn’t mean the material is actually humorous; however, FOUR LIONS is packed with razor-sharp wordplay and glorious slapstick that make it an explosively funny and unsettling film.

Grade: A

Jennifer's Body

JENNIFER'S BODY (Karyn Kusama, 2009)

In JENNIFER'S BODY Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried are unlikely best friends who find themselves at odds when one of them becomes possessed by a demon. Carrying the unflattering nickname Needy, Seyfried's character is a regular teenager who has always played second fiddle to Fox's Jennifer, the hottest girl in high school.

Jennifer knows how desirable and popular she is and flaunts the power her looks give her. The wounds Jennifer inflicts are purely emotional until a demon enters her body and takes control.

Rather than an out-and-out horror film, JENNIFER'S BODY is a supernatural high school dark comedy with a feminist bent courtesy of director Karyn Kusama and JUNO screenwriter Diablo Cody. In blending so many genres it's inevitable that JENNIFER'S BODY is somewhat confused about its identity and can't withstand the strain of a disjointed plot. An inciting tragedy and Jennifer and Needy's connection are among the points that lack sufficient explanation for what follows in the film.

Kusama and Cody aim to examine the power and fear of female sexuality, particularly among adolescents, but the muddled second half can't fulfill their ambitions. Seyfried, the film's true lead, turns in a solid and sensitive performance while Fox fails to locate the nuance in her character. She's not entirely to blame. The script doesn't clarify her motivation for a decision in a key scene and then leaves the audience in the dark about what makes her behave so monstrously.

Cody has received some backlash for her signature slang-heavy dialogue. Such criticism has merit, mainly because of the showy but empty nature of her words, but her sharp conversations occasionally draw blood and laughs, such as when she takes on disparate subjects as the tween flick AQUAMARINE and 9/11 fetishization.

Like a girl transforming into a woman during adolescence, JENNIFER'S BODY aspires to be smart, hip, sexy, and scary. Kusama and Cody don't fully succeed in making JENNIFER'S BODY as clever as intended, but in deploying Fox's physical allure as a weapon in the film and to prospective viewers of it, they unleash some potent ideas and subvert the genre.

Grade: C

Margot at the Wedding

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING (Noah Baumbach, 2007)

Margot (Nicole Kidman) and Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) are not the closest sisters, and a reconciliation hardly seems imminent in MARGOT AT THE WEDDING. Margot is a fiction writer whose work liberally borrows from her family members' least proud moments. That explains the long chill in their relationship, but Pauline offers an olive branch anyway when Margot comes to visit. It makes little impact as Margot would rather use it to beat her sibling.

Margot and her son Claude (Zane Pais) have traveled to the island where her parents' home, now owned by Pauline, will host her sister's wedding. Pauline will be marrying Malcolm (Jack Black), an unemployed schlub who occupies his time writing letters to the editor. Needless to say, he is easy pickings for Margot's withering opinions.

Writer-director Noah Baumbach's last film, the divorce dark comedy THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, depicted domestic fallout in painstaking detail, but MARGOT AT THE WEDDING takes psychological warfare and familial hostility to a higher level. The film portrays a deeply dysfunctional and unsympathetic lot who spit darts at each other as naturally as breathing. They do so in the name of honesty and openness, which makes them blameless in their eyes.

Baumbach remains skilled as ever with well-turned lines and stinging humor. If anything, the two years between films gave him time to sharpen his knives so the jokes would cut with greater precision. The laughs hurt, but one has to appreciate the artistry in such wicked wit.

Yet only so much nastiness can be endured without greater insight into the human condition, or at least these characters. We would flee from these people in everyday interactions. Being stuck with them for an hour and a half can be downright unbearable.

As a kind of theater of cruelty, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING is unarguably successful; however, after choking on laughs for a period, the question becomes whether Baumbach has anything to deliver beyond his misanthropic floggings. Little introduction to Margot and the others is needed to see them for the hateful people they are, but what is the point of subjecting us to this caustic environment if there isn't a larger idea behind observing it?

The ugliness extends to the visual palette. The film has the appearance of being shot through a polarized lens. Cinematographer Harris Savides gives an oppressive darkness to the images, a choice in line with the murky emotions clouding the air. The decision is artistically defensible, but it comes at the expense of leaving the already weary viewer feeling even gloomier. If it's possible to get seasonal affective disorder from a movie, this might be the one.

Ultimately, the matter of degree is what trips up Baumbach in MARGOT AT THE WEDDING. The problem is not that the characters are unlikable or totally unfamiliar. Indeed, their harshness and lack of generosity may be all too closely recognized, albeit in smaller doses. No, the trouble is that he has drawn caricatures incapable of self-editing and possessing shreds of decency that we would expect to find in non-sociopaths.

Grade: C+