Netflix Watch Party #21—Being John Malkovich (1999)—starts in fifteen minutes.
Please install the Netflix Party extension (now officially called “teleparty”) if you haven’t already. You must have a U.S. Nextflix account and a Chrome-based browser to participate.
UPDATED LINK BELOW:
Here is the link to join: https://www.tele.pe/netflix/6869f3ee51c501fa?s=s178
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DIRECTED BY: Steve Cuden
FEATURING: Michael Emanuel, David Reivers, Piper Cochrane
PLOT: An alcoholic writer finds inspiration when a stray dog starts telepathically dictating scripts to him—and then orders him to kill.
COMMENTS: Lucky is an ugly little movie—shot on video, dimly lit, and occurring almost entirely in one trash-strewn house—but that may be an appropriate aesthetic, since the story is about an ugly little man.
Lucky begins as a black comedy about Millard Mudd, a schluby alcoholic writer specializing in cartoon scripts. Early on, there’s a long series of sketches where Mudd goes on “dates” with various women: a masochistic prostitute, a nun, his own half-sister. These segments employ an R-rated type of sitcom humor, with a mild touch of the surreal. Even when there’s a decapitation by chainsaw, the severed head is so silly and unrealistic that the effect is light. But things take a turn toward the grindhouse when the talking dog Lucky arrives and grows increasingly abusive in his telepathic dialogues. Mudd’s loose hold on his mind slips further, and he gives himself over to sadomasochistic sex fantasies. An interlude where he discusses the tortures he plans to inflict on his victim as she lies there bound and nude, objecting to his plans with no greater distress than if he had insisted on ordering out for pizza when she was in the mood for sushi, is particularly disturbing. For the final murders, even the pretense of comedy fades away. The way the perversity slowly ratchets up, while (mostly) maintaining the same deadpan style throughout, shows skill, but obviously won’t be to everyone’s taste.
The editing is good, shifting back and forth between fantasy and reality to create a sense of pace and action that the producers couldn’t otherwise afford. The acting is adequate—the most impressive performance, perhaps, is given by Sydney the dog as Lucky (kudos to her trainer). And while it would be hard to make the case that the movie as a whole succeeds as more than a curiosity, the screenplay (by Stephen Sustarsic, who had previously produced scripts for “The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh”) is actually solid. Much of the story is told through Mudd’s internal monologues, a technique which locks you into his mindset and makes the movie seem like a translation of a novella. The speeches never feel too intrusive or like they are substituting for something that could have been conveyed with action, and they’re always to the point. Lines like “I made three big changes during my life. I switched beers when I was sixteen. I switched back when I was thirty. And I killed a girl last week” tell you all you need to know about the character—and all you need to know about the movie. That quote either intrigues you, or immediately turns you off.
We waited so long to review this one, unfortunately, that the DVD went out of print, and the film is not available streaming. Used DVDs should be obtainable, if you are interested.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by “Jasper Oliver,” who explained, “On paper it looks like standard cheapo horror comedy fare but in actuality it’s an immensely flawed and disturbing little film that sits with you long after viewing.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
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DIRECTED BY: Dmitri Logothetis
FEATURING: Alain Moussi, Nicolas Cage
PLOT: Jake awakens in a secret military facility in Burma with no recollection of his past, but with much recollection of jiu jitsu.
COMMENTS: Jiu Jitsu currently rates a mere three stars on IMDb. That’s two more stars than actually appear in it. Of course, when that single star is Nicolas Cage, it suggests one of two things. The first possibility is that it’s that once-in-five-or-ten-years alignment of the cosmos during which our boy Nic does something serious and taps into his capacity for gravitas. The second, much more possible, possibility is that Nic shows up, scatters his eccentric magic during his all-too-brief screen time, and raises a “crummy B-movie” to the level of a “crummy B-movie, but with Nicolas Cage!” Even someone as slow on the uptake as myself knew that this would be the latter, but I can say that Jiu Jitsu is not the worst 2020 release I’ve seen–by a long shot[efn_note] That distinction probably goes to Tezuka’s Barbara[/efn_note].
As any practitioner of the art can tell you, “jiu jitsu” was taught to mankind about two millennia ago by a traveling space creature desiring to hone his fighting skills by popping through a portal in a Buddhist temple which opens up every six years as augured by a cyclical comet. If this alien—let’s call it “Brax”, as per the director/writer’s advisement—does not get to jiu-jitsu his way through nine fighters when he visits, he will lay waste to all life on the planet. Bad news for mankind? Hardly. We’ve got two things Brax isn’t counting on: square-jaw superman Jake (Alain Moussi) and the wiley warrior Wylie (Nicolas Cage). With these jiu jitseleros and their team of seven interchangeable associates, Brax gets more than it’s bargained for.
Your patience for—and, conceivably, enjoyment of—Jiu Jitsu will hinge on two things. First thing: your appetite for staged martial arts ticklings. Leading man Moussi made his career as a stuntman, so he’s got the chops. And all the side-characters may not be able to act, but they do seem comfortable with the thwack-thwack-thwack element. (Though you may not quite believe it when you see Cage’s character do a leaping flip.)
Which brings me to the other thing: what is your devotion to Nicolas Cage? I cannot recall any film that I was not happy to see him on-screen in (be it wielding a chromium axe, spraying his girlfriend’s daughter with a hose, or riffing off himself during one of those “one-in-ten-year” roles). Hearing his delivery of bad dialogue as the druggy(?), crazy(!) mentor never failed to rouse at least a chuckle—particularly when he drops the bon-mot, “Just remember the one thing you always have with jiu jitsu… leverage.”
And with that bomb, I’m dropping the mic.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
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DIRECTED BY: Colin Thompson
FEATURING: Colin Thompson, Russell Posner, Makenzie Leigh
PLOT: A man takes psychedelic mushrooms on the anniversary of his friend’s death and relives a mushroom trip they had together when they were sixteen.
COMMENTS: The hinted-at plot in Light Years never really develops. Instead, what happens is that we watch a trio of likable kids nervously score mushrooms, take mushrooms, try to hold it together without their parents finding out they’re high on mushrooms, go to a high school party on mushrooms, chop wood at midnight (on… you get the idea), and generally just hang out. The movie is light, as its title implies. The mood is nostalgic, like The Wonder Years—on mushrooms. There’s not a lot in the way of a meaningful ongoing story— although there are lots of incidents—and really only token character development. The story is framed as an elegy for Kevin’s friend Briggs, who died under circumstances that aren’t relevant to the movie, and what it does well is to capture the carefree pleasure of teenage camaraderie. You can tell, without even looking at the end credits disclaimer stating that the film was inspired by actual events, that it’s based on writer/director Colin Thompson’s real life experiences. There’s no other possible explanation for the movie’s existence.
The acting is unexpectedly decent. Pimply Briggs (Russell Posner) actually looks and acts like a high school sophomore, with an unselfconscious awkwardness and endearingly goofy mannerisms, like the ghoulish open-faced smile he routinely breaks into. He and Kevin have a real chemistry, sharing a private ritual where they spar with improvised dialogue in increasingly silly voices. This chemistry is more remarkable due to the fact that young Kevin is (most of the time) played by old Kevin, the heavily-stubbled-and-clearly-not-a-teenager Colin Thompson. Thompson also plays—again, most of the time—the third friend, Larry; and, in drag, he also takes the roles of his own ex, and the mom of the kid who’s throwing a keg party for the high schoolers and bringing along a tray of jello shots, and a lot of the extras. All these Kevins appear partly because of a subtext that Kevin is a narcissist. But mainly it’s just a part of the director’s trip-disorientation strategy, one that also includes abrupt changes in film stock, occasional collage-style montages and music videos, video warping and glitching, and animated characters appearing in the unused corners of the film (recurring cartoon characters like a cutout of adult Kevin’s dog, and some kind of derp-faced flying cat in a sailor cap).
The thought that Light Years inspires most in me is the question: is psychedelic cinema a legitimate subgenre? Despite the possibilities for deep introspection psychedelics promise, the “trip movie” rarely features any kind of serious plot or philosophy; it’s almost always an excuse for stylistic and technical experimentation. A short line of (almost) non-narrative movies beginning with The Trip seek to recreate the feeling and experience of being on psychedelic drugs for the audience. The hallucinatory qualities of psychedelics are easy (and fun!) to symbolize visually, but the experience of having your brain’s natural neurotransmitters temporarily pranked by chemical interlopers—the complex combination of euphoria, wonder, anxiety and confusion—is harder to reproduce. In the most successful trip film, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, scenes of Hunter S. Thompson enjoying cocktails in a Vegas lounge surrounded by kitschy dinosaurs, or trying to redeem his hotel reservation while the desk clerk’s face warps unpredictably, effectively recreate the edginess of druggy disorientation. But that movie works on multiple levels: as drug porn, sure, but also as a straight-out comedy, and as a dual-edged social satire of both the dominant 1960s culture and of the very subculture it superficially celebrates. Light Years is not quite light years away from that achievement, but it does suggest that hallucinations alone can only take a movie so far. LSD has been around, on film and in life, for six decades now; it’s no longer novel or outrageous, merely naughty. A trip is not enough to sustain a great film; you need a plot and/or a deeper theme to carry you across the finish line.
This month’s Amazon Prime Watch Party—Climax (2018)—starts in just over fifteen minutes.
You’ll need to be an Amazon Prime member in the US (we think) to participate.
There will be no pausing or rewinding except for technical reasons.
We are offering no technical support, so help each other out if needed.
Here is the link to join: https://amz.onl/8yAapZG
See you soon!