Capsules

CAPSULE: THE FP (2011)

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DIRECTED BY: Brandon Trost, Jason Trost

FEATURING: Jason Trost, Caker Folley, Lee Valmassy, Art Hsu

PLOT: In the future rival gangs fight for control of a lawless suburban town, gaining power and street cred by winning dance video game duels.

Still from The FP (2011)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It dances to the beat of its own beat machine, for sure, and will strike a chord with some, but it’s not weird enough to overcome its own lightweight aspirations.

COMMENTS: Although I can’t unconditionally recommend The FP, I do admire its willingness to play its goofy premise with a (mostly) straight face. There are only a couple of outright jokes in the movie’s entire run-time (including a pretty funny one about the ecology of alcoholics and waterfowl). Most of the time, we’re allowed to generate our own humor from the absurd spectacle of wannabe gangstas settling deadly scores on video game dance floors. Eye-patched hero J-Tro quits the 248 gang after brother B-Tro drops dead, presumably of shame, after losing a hoofing contest to mohawked L Dubba E, leader of the 245 clan. Coaxed out of retirement by monumentally irritating sidekick KCDC, J-Tro returns to the FP to find L Dubba E monopolizing not only the suburbs’ liquor supply, but also his would-be New Wave squeeze Stacy. This leads, inevitably, to a series of training montages before J-Tro faces L Dubba one-on-one for some beatbox vengeance. Meanwhile, a cast of spastic punk extras say the f-word while dressed in mix-and-match outfits from Road Warrior and Karate Kid (the ladies dress like Cyndi Lauper in the depths of a depraved cocaine binge). From the Commodore 64-style opening graphic scroll to the synthpop theme, the movie is oh-so-Eighties it hurts. It’s a parody of all those shy-and-stoic underdog defeats the arrogant villain and gets the girl flicks, and also a satire on today’s white suburban youth acting all ghetto (not the most challenging of satirical targets, for sure, but sometimes you aim at what you can hit). The slang is thick to the point of near impenetrability (“J-TRO jumped his ass and was like bow to the bridge, yo kick it! Believ’ dat!”), but it’s too near real contemporary teen talk (characters actually say “whatevs” and “for realz”) to have any poetic charm. Odd moments include an attack with an electric tennis racket and a drug trip where a freaked out J-Tro believes he’s being attacked by hipsters in rainbow wigs, but the weirdest thing about the movie is that none of the characters realizes that none of the other characters in the movie actually has a “black ass.” The 248 crew refer to each other as “Niggas” (“nig” for short), which they explain stands for “Never Ignorant in Gettin’ Goals Accomplished.” To me, a more accurate acronym for their behavior would be “Willfully Insipid Goofiness Galls Adults.” I desperately wanted to enjoy this offbeat movie, but I couldn’t, because every character was constantly screaming at me in a stream of profanity-laced, alphabet soup jargon, and I wanted them all to die in grisly ways. With its head-rattling techno soundtrack and post-apocalyptic rave visuals, The FP seems hellbent on giving anyone over the age of 30 a screaming headache; if that sounds like an endorsement to you, then by all means give it a watch.

The FP was released by Drafthouse Films, the new distribution branch of the famous Alamo Drafthouse saloon/cinema.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…just a flat out bizarre experience that never quite clicks.”–Jeremy Lebens, “We Got This Covered” (Blu-ray)

Capsules

CAPSULE: NOBODY ELSE BUT YOU [POUPOUPIDOU] (2011)

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DIRECTED BY: Gérald Hustache-Mathieu

FEATURING: Jean-Paul Rouve, Sophie Quinton, Guillaume Gouix

PLOT: In a snowbound French town, a crime novelist investigates the death of a local celebrity who believed herself to be the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.

Still from Nobody Else but You [Poupoupidou] (2011)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Nobody Else but You flirts with weirdness, especially through some nods to “Twin Peaks,” but it only nudges the needle on the old Weirdometer a little past a reading of “offbeat.”

COMMENTS: Nobody Else but You may appeal most Marilyn Monroe-philes and fans of “Twin Peaks.” Hustache-Mathieu’s obsession with these bits of Americana, along with other pop cultural touchstones like crime novelist James Ellroy, isn’t likely to endear him to his countrymen, but it makes his style translate easily on these shores (this is a great French movie to show people who assume they hate French movies). Even the soundtrack is a retread, with chilly modern renditions of Sixties hits like “I Put a Spell on You” and “California Dreaming” (in English). With such flavorful inspirations, the movie never entirely becomes its own thing; but that’s not a huge problem, since Hustache-Mathieu borrows with taste, and the novelty occurs in the mixture of iconic inspirations. The Marilyn Monroe references are easy to pick up on—maybe too easy—but the “Twin Peaks” nods are a little subtler. There’s the general tone of quirky menace, the setting of an isolated country town full of strange characters, and the theme of an outsider investigating the death of a wholesome blonde local celebrity who turns out to have terrible secrets. The director adds a few more specific references, like secret tapes held by a psychiatrist, a flickering-lights-in-the-morgue scene, and the shrouded headshot of the beautiful corpse dusted with powder. This movie doesn’t go deliriously over-the-top with Lynch‘s mix of melodrama, comedy and surrealism, however; and the dour crime novelist replacing “Peaks”‘ gung-ho G-man along with the general hostility of the villagers to the outsider mark other significant differences from the TV scenario. Prematurely craggy Jean-Paul Rouve is intense and obsessed enough to serve as the audience’s conduit into the mystery. He gets a little help from the one sympathetic cop in town, though there’s no payoff to the awkward homoerotic chemistry that develops between the two. Like Michelle Williams in 2011’s more famous My Week with Marilyn, Sophie Quinton isn’t exactly a dead ringer for Norma Jean Mortenson, but she captures the essentially quality of Marilynishness: that potent mix of raw sex and delicious tragedy. Real-time narration by the corpse, the sexiest cheese ad you’ve ever seen, and a photo shoot with nude firemen score significant quirk points and keep the interest from flagging. It may not be the weirdest movie out there, but it’s different enough to engage the adventurous viewer. If you’re a Marilyn Monroe fanatic, or if you’re just in the mood for a light and mild French variation on a David Lynch/Coen Brothers thriller, you could do a lot worse.

When watching this movie, look out for the number “5.” You could even make a drinking game out of spotting the numeral, if you were inclined to get really hammered.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a subversive and strange little film noir…”–Boyd van Hoeij, Variety (contemporaenous)

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: CHICKEN WITH PLUMS [POULET AUX PRUNES] (2011)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi

FEATURING: , , , ,

PLOT: A master musician loses the will to live after his prized violin is destroyed, and retires to his deathbed where his story is told through flashbacks mingled with fantasy sequences.

Still from Chicken with Plums [Poulet aux Prunes] (2011)
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: It’s a movie made up mostly of deathbed hallucinations that includes visits with Socrates, the Angel of Death, and a giant version of Sophia Loren; that’s enough to get it on the weird map. The fact that it’s visually spectacular and delightfully artificial hurts not a bit.

COMMENTS: In the 1950s all doomed, elegant heroes and heroines in the movies smoked, and smoke is a key visual element of Chicken with Plums. Early in the film, master violinist Nasser-Ali reluctantly smokes opium at the insistence of an antiques dealer; later, his dead mother’s soul is so thick that it’s visible as a cloud of smoke hovering over her grave. Stylistically, the film is itself like smoke, wispy and constantly changing. Dream sequences, flashbacks and flash-forwards explore an expansive visual palette, ranging from figures isolated in Expressionist shadows to popup storybook animations. Everything is deliberately stagebound so that even in the “realistic” scenes, the skies are a hand-painted pink and lavender. The most jarring experiment is a moment where the movie suddenly turns into an American-style sitcom, complete with a laugh track; if you can handle that side trip, you’ll be in for the whole ride. Death-seeking Nasser-Ali, played with frowny melancholia by mustachioed Mathieu Amalric, is a selfish character, to be sure, but the more we learn about his backstory the more forgiving we become. We’re never able to absolve him entirely of his decision to abandon life (and his wife and children), but we do feel the weight he bears through his life, and can appreciate his decision as tragedy. Our hearts break the moment his does. Nasser-Ali’s apparently shrewish wife Faringuisse (de Medeiros) stars in an equally tragic subplot, and one of their two children is given an epilogue that generates further despair. It’s all very romantic, but the old, sentimental “love is worth dying for” theme plays believably only in the unreal movie past the film evokes: the formal world of yesteryear where gentlemen always wear ties, ladies wear hats, and everyone blows smoke directly at the camera. Chicken with Plums‘ 1930s-1950s time frame conjures up a comforting antique nostalgia, and the Iranian setting adds exotic spice. Delightfully strange moments include when the hallucinating musician is smothered in giant cleavage, a visitation from a ragged gravesite prophet, and the chilling appearance of the Angel of Death, who drops by not to claim Nasser-Ali’s soul but just to chat a bit and to tell a morbidly ironic story-within-the-story. Like a solo adagio played on an antique instrument, Nasser-Ali’s tale is beautiful and sad. Unabashedly artificial, unashamed to moon over lost loves, and a little aware of the absurdity of its own romanticism, Chicken with Plums hits a unique note: despondent whimsy.

Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi’s first film collaboration was the award-winning animated Persepolis (2007), adapted by Satrapi from her own autobiographical graphic novel. Chicken with Plums is also from a Satrapi comic, and supposedly tells the (obviously embellished) story of a relative of hers. On an unrelated note, this movie reunites and , last seen together in the Certified Weird The Saddest Music in the World.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The many surreal flourishes, like the film’s giant breasts and petals floating through a pink-tinged sky, are supposed to be absolved of cringing obviousness because they’re, you know, poetic and exotic.”–Farran Smith Nehme, The New York Post (contemporaneous)

Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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2012 is drawing to a close faster than we realize, and it’s time to look for this year’s overlooked weird gems. To that end, next week we’ll be taking a taste of the luscious Chicken with Plums (the live-action romantic fantasy from the makers of Persepolis); investigating Nobody Else But You, the French mystery about a dead cheese model who believed herself to be the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe; and we’ll take a trip In the Realms of the Unreal, the documentary about outsider artist (and definite weirdo) Henry Darger and his fantasy world where little girl warriors battle evil adult slavers. Alfred will actually look ahead to 2013 as he gives us more inside info on the creation of the upcoming Creeporia. Oh, and on Thursday, we’re going to try and fit in some turkey and football as well… just saying.

Weird search terms used to locate the site this week were more quantity than quality, but at least we have lots of candidates to pick from in our weekly quest to isolate the Weirdest Search Term of the Week. We strongly considered making “super despondent japanese nurses sucking part1” our weirdest search term of the week, but we disqualified the query when we discovered there actually is a video by this exact name (obviously it’s a highly adult material, so don’t search for it—you’ll probably just end up back here, anyway). If super despondent Japanese nurse porn is out there, then you have to feel for the guy asking “where’s the snake midget porn”? Speaking of questions that confound even Google, we can think of no possible advice for the person asking “wherees fur mat thing? lounge on it naked facedown?” Our official Weirdest Search Term of the Week, however, is the ambiguous “wordpress putting a table above midgets.” Are they saying that content management system WordPress values tables more than midgets, or that if you try to insert a midget into your WordPress blog, it automatically inserts a table above it?

Here’s how the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue now stands: The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky (re-review); Society; Final Programme; “Foutaises”; Bloodsucking Freaks; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!