Tag Archives: Michael Almereyda

Capsules

CAPSULE: TWISTER (1989)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Suzy Amis, ,

PLOT: A man seeks to reconnect with his daughter and her alcoholic mother, who rarely leave the mansion they share with the family patriarch and a weirdo artist brother/uncle.Twister (1989)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: This shambolic mass of quivering quirk is for fans of the cast only—specifically, for fans of Crispin Glover, who, bullwhip in hand, is acting somewhere near the acme of his Crispin Glover-ishness here as a fey would-be artist.

COMMENTS: Harry Dean Stanton is mini-golf mogul and patriarch of the crumbling Cleveland clan in Twister, Michael Almereyda’s odd but mostly unsuccessful debut film. Stanton, who is romancing a local Christian kids’ show host (Lois Chiles), is mildly eccentric, but his children have gone around the bend. Howdy (Crispin Glover) is an effete, sensitive artist in a shaggy Prince Valiant haircut. He plays guitar and sings (badly) and looks constipated most of the time. Sister Maureen (Suzy Amis) is a mess: constantly drinking beer, passing out on the lawn, and imagining helicopters are watching her. According to the story’s plan she’s supposed to be quirky and charming, but her behavior is too unpredictable and dangerously immature to be endearing. She’s an unfit mother, guilty of child endangerment just by being herself. Observing all the crazy are a trio of somewhat normal outsiders: live-in nanny Lola (Charlaine Woodard), whose underdeveloped part seems to be on back-order; victim kid Violet (Lindsay Christman), who is currently normal (against all odds) but in desperate need of rescue; and decent-guy protagonist Chris (Dylan McDermott), who just wants to put his family back together and get his daughter out of the Cleveland’s madhouse.

The title implies a cataclysmic upheaval that never comes. The Cleveland men get and lose girlfriends, the maturity-challenged siblings make plans to visit their absentee mother that don’t get very far, and Chris tries to woo the mother of his child despite increasing evidence that she’s too far gone into alcoholism and mental illness to make a commitment that lasts more than five minutes. By the end, despite the script’s hopeful protestations, we don’t believe that anyone has learned anything, or that anything is going to change for the core family, no matter what new living arrangements they propose. Twister is a character-driven story without genuine character development; things continue to happen, it keeps teasing us that it’s about to turn interesting, and then suddenly it ends, in a light breeze rather than a tornado.

Twister‘s main asset is its cast, and one of its coups was getting beat novelist to show up and deliver a few lines of dialogue. Watching Glover’s performance alongside Burroughs, you sense that the actor based his laborious, over-enunciating schtick on the junkie icon’s odd cadence. Seeing these two cult figures exchange carefully-crafted but halting lines of dialogue is one of Twister’s only small pleasures.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Almereyda finds exactly the right tone: a loopy, understated deadpan that invites empathy rather than ridicule.”–Nathan Rabin, The A.V. Club (DVD)

(This movie was nominated for review by dthoren, who said it “stars Harry Dean Stanton as patriarch of an insane family, including a bullwhip-wielding Crispin Glover in one of his trademark terrible wigs. I love it, and I hope you will too.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Reader Recommendations

RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: HAPPY HERE AND NOW (2002)

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Review writing contest #1 winner, by Pamela De Graff.

DIRECTED BY: Michael Almereyda

FEATURING: Clarence Williams III, (who also co-produced), Ally Sheedy, former super model Shalom Harlow, model Gloria Reuben, Karl Geary, rhythm and blues star Ernie K-Doe

PLOT: Happy Here and Now is a surrealistic satire in which a young woman tries to find

Still from Happy Here and Now (2002)

her missing sister by investigating eccentric New Orleans characters who are entangled in a web of cyber-intrigue.

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: Happy Here and Now is a dream-like atmosphere piece which artfully combines unusual visual and acoustic elements. This movie is unusual in its story telling structure. It guides us through a netherworld of oddball people, their cryptic actions and strange gadgets via a series of vignettes that are ultimately connected.

COMMENTS: In this quirky odyssey, Canadian actress Liane Balaban plays Amelia. She has come to New Orleans to locate a missing sister who has erased every trace of herself. Clarence Williams III plays a limping ex CIA agent with an unexplained leg wound that just won’t heal.

Williams forensically dissects the sister’s laptop hard drive. He finds traces of cryptic conversations held online with a poetic but sinister misfit (Karl Geary). The stranger uses a special technology to change his real-time appearance and country of origin on webcam-conference.

Amelia attempts to determine the presence of a connection between the late night Internet chats and her sister’s disappearance. She does so with Thomas’ assistance by contacting Geary’s puzzling character and conducting a fresh set of webcam conversations. What are his motives, what is he truly capable of? Why does he change his appearance and answer questions with questions?

Did this enigmatic stranger lure Amelia’s sister to her fate in a snuff film? Amelia must figure out how to trace and outwit him by playing a game of deception online.

Throughout her quest for answers, Amelia encounters a cascade of artistic dilettantes. One of several exceptions is the real-life Ernie K-Doe, famous for his 1961 number one hit, “Mother-in -Law,” who appears as himself in his actual New Orleans club.

Nearly all of the characters are in some way unknowingly interconnected via a subplot orchestrated by David Arquette’s character, Eddie Mars. Mars is a creatively misguided, self-employed exterminator who entwines the protagonists via a film project. It is a soft-porn, direct-to-digital Internet film about a time traveling Nicola Tesla. (And there might be some termites and a spherical fire breaking out in a space station, he hasn’t decided yet.)

Happy Here and Now is a dream-like atmosphere piece which artfully combines unusual visual and acoustic elements. It highlights a smattering of New Orleans lore and culture. Thomas’ character weaves a narrative of local lore as the camera pans by local cemeteries, barbecue joints, The Napoleon House, and a few other unconventional landmarks. We get a nice sample of New Orleans homes and interiors, blues clubs, fauna, and steamy avenues by streetlight. Odd characters such as man wearing Napoleonic clothing wander the streets.

The film is open-ended as to its message. Enthusiasts of movies that conclude with a concrete sense of finality should look at Happy Here and Now as being a piece that is intended to inspire the imagination.

The film features musician, performance artist and electronics whiz “Quintron” (Robert Rolston’s stage name) as himself. Quintron has distinguished himself in arcane circles for, among other things, inventing clever but peculiar electronic musical instruments. One of his Tesla coils is featured in the film.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Strange by even its director’s ultra-eccentric standards, Happy Here and Now takes Michael Almereyda’s usual reality-blurring, video-mediated experimentation to new what-the-f*** levels…” -David Ng, The Village Voice (2005)