Busy scheduling meant there was no official interview with writer/director Casper Kelly about his magically macabre movie, Buddy. However, we were mindful enough to bring a recording device to the lively and informative Q & A session immediately following the film. Keep an ear out for a loud, hopefully familiar voice.
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DIRECTED BY: Casper Kelly
FEATURING: Delaney Quinn, Cristin Milioti, Tristan Borders, Madison Skyy Polan, and the voice of Keegan-Michael Key
PLOT: A group of children’s-show friends attempt to escape from the increasingly homicidal titular unicorn.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Buddy’s lair is carved directly into the sheer walls of the uncanny valley, sure, but the denouement’s dreamy poignancy secures Kelly’s caper a place in our weird hearts.
COMMENTS: You may not know it, but Buddy wants to be your friend. And even though he’s just met you, he loves you very much. But unless you want to spend the remainder of your existence (or perhaps longer) cycling through an endless series of singing, dancing, frolicking bromides, do not extend your hand to this beastly television host. Watch out for your family, too, because once they’ve gone Buddy, there’s no going back.
Buddy will appeal to a number of audiences: horror fans seeking something candy-coated and full of carnage; adventurous viewers yearning for the sinister side of wacky; drug aficionados who have themselves tasted of the butterscotch psychotropic flower petal; and especially anthropologists studying television culture of the late second millennium. This film is a simulacrum of excesses that, in hindsight, feel almost barbaric.
I am not referring to the creepy gore found in Buddy, no. I speak of the bombardment of treacly songs and horrific performance foisted on the youth of yesteryear—and, regrettably, today as well. Strip away Buddy’s murderous rampages, and there’s still an ever-pulsating technicolor blob of repulsiveness. When we root for Freddy and her liberated buddies, we’re not just invested in their physical safety: we want them to escape to live a well-adjusted life, with all its surprises and misfortunes.
Casper Kelly leaps out of the fire and into the impossibly vibrant world of 1990s children’s programs with his latest film, and the product of his imagination both sears the eyes and slashes the mind, all while also capturing the heart. During Kelly’s introduction to his movie, he commented on his own children’s viewing of the various late-20th-century “children’s classics.” I can only hope and pray that those days are gone, that the memories fade, and that in years to come we can look upon Buddy as a totem of daytime horrors past.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
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DIRECTED BY: Harrison Atkins
FEATURING: David Brown, Suzanna Son, Chase Williamson
PLOT: Ricky workings on writing projects until memory lapses begin plaguing him after a grocery run.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: When men lick the road with abandon, and small fish appear in your pocket, and boom mics come alive, things ain’t quite right.
COMMENTS: “Really? You don’t find that disturbing?” Tepper has just been scrolling through his phone, landing on a picture of an ornamental plant growing from a raised stone urn. Roommate Ricky doesn’t share Tepper’s discomfort about this image and the benign object within. But by this point in Sour Minnows, it is already difficult to tell what may and may not be ominous, as the narrative has already proven as slippery as a fish.
The point of view slides around between the three main characters, screenwriter Ricky, his somewhat-girlfriend Aura, and the distracted Tepper. Each character becomes progressively compromised as they find themselves in situations they can’t control and awaken with only a hazy recollection of the events. Aura slathers a department-store evening gown with a rotted bird corpse, in order to astrally-project her hand into Ricky’s car to smear his headrest with the goo; Tepper’s mind wanders into a nearby window, either removing his television from the room or removing his own self; and Ricky attends a fancy media event where he receives a cryptic note before traveling through a tunnel connecting the men’s room to his home, frightening his sleeping doppelganger as he looms at his bedroom door.
If you’re comfortable with a lack of clarity and semi-detached performances (“Are you doing a ‘bit’?”), Sour Minnows is quite a treat. I saw it once, at its second screening, when the festival programmer introduced the movie with his remark that this would be the fourth time he’s watched it. Subsequent viewings probably unlock coherency, but even my one-time visit to the odd world Harrison Atkins has crafted and confettied proved satisfying. Not unlike the Tepper’s reaction to the urn, Sour Minnows is a bit disturbing, and more than a little absurd.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
A square visits various environments, hosting a cat, a blender, and a bong along the journey.
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DIRECTED BY: Stefano Bertelli
FEATURING: None credited
PLOT: Fred is a student whose attempts to resolve his various encounters—particularly his rendezvous with Hana in Japan—regularly land him in a cosmic inner space.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Papercraft stop-motion meets 4th-dimensional musings in Bertelli’s film, whose protagonist just cannot seem to wrap up events in his life. And there’s a talking cat.
COMMENTS: We are in a classroom, and Fred asks to be excused. He hoofs the school corridors to the bathroom, and makes it in time to spew forth a tidal quantity of ecto-green vomit, overflowing the toilet, overflowing the restroom, ultimately washing down the school hallway in a viscous wave. A cat asks what that was all about, and Fred replies, “That was just a memory.” Like all of us, Fred has countless memories; unlike us, Fred experiences his own mind space as a hangar-sized chamber, with a starlit background, a growing gyre spurting cubes, and, of course, an enigmatic talking cat providing comments and advice.
Stefano Bertelli pursues two grand ambitions with his feature debut. The first is long-form animation with paper stock. All motion and effects are achieved the hard way, as paper Fred interacts with other paper people and navigates a three-dimensional space made up of a paper sky with paper clouds above, and paper buildings and paper vehicles below. This vibrant aesthetic easily catches the eye and is a perfect vehicle for the odd sense of humor which runs throughout. Pratfalls in the cosmic mind, recurring encounters with a bully, paper Fred playing a paper rendered first-person shooter on a paper television: the playfully absurd mingles freely with temporal philosophy.
The last is the crux of the Bertelli’s second ambition, for Spacetime Chronicles has a great deal to say about happenstance, decision making, and fate. Fred wants to follow up his meet-cute with Hana, whom he encounters on a tram. But each step is interrupted by increasingly unlikely tripwires (indeed, what are the odds he’d end up in room number four on the fourth floor of the hotel just after learning that numeral is borderline dangerous?). The cat does its best to tidy his subconscious and tip him towards his desired fate, even tossing aside one of its nine lives in the effort. But it’s all quite confusing for Fred, and us as well; we’re told that to manipulate our lives is as simple as choosing to perceive our preferred fate. We learn alongside Fred, however, that that may be an impossible task, and we may all just be doomed to be reduced to a heap of memory boxes beneath a heap of rubble.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: