Capsules

CAPSULE: ZENITH (2010)

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DIRECTED BY: Vladan Nikolic

FEATURING: Peter Scanavino, Jason Robards III, Ana Asensio, David Thornton

PLOT:  In the year 2044 people have been genetically engineered to feel perpetually happy, so

Still from Zenith (2010)

they perversely seek out illegal drugs that bring intense pain; in this society, a dealer in pharmaceutical misery stumbles upon what may be a generations old conspiracy that goes by the code name “Zenith.”

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  More confusing than weird, Zenith is at the same time a laudable and thought-provoking, but forced and undramatic, attempt to create a cult-y reality-bender along the lines of more organic puzzle movies like Primer.

COMMENTS:  Zenith is one bewildering conspiracy movie.  It creates frustration and paranoia by chopping up its narrative with lots of fast-forwards, rewinds, out-of-sequence scenes, and even episodes of déjà vu.  Elisions, false clues and dead end leads increase the confusion quotient.  Although the sloppiness of the story is an intentional strategy meant to put us inside the paranoid heads of the protagonists, the procedure still occasionally comes off as the director jerking the viewer around—especially when it comes to the rug-pulling conclusion, which tempts alienating the movie’s core audience.  Writer/director Vladan Nikolic crafts an intricate scenario here that may please fans of “difficult” stories, but it’s more rewarding, above and beyond the plot level, to think of the movie as an examination of the conspiracy fan’s psychology.  “Dumb” Jack, the pain-pill pusher (a grungy and intense Peter Scanavino), begins the story thinking of his defrocked priest father, Ed, who’s obsessed with trivia about the Illuminati and the Bilderbreg group, as a crazy old coot.  But the more he watches old VHS tapes of dad’s decades-old investigations of the “Zenith” conspiracy, the more he comes to be just like him, until at the end the two men have become virtual doppelgängers.  The movie suggests that it may be able to easier to get sucked into irrational conspiratorial beliefs than it seems, especially seeing as how it asks the viewer to take pleasure in following the clues and tagging along as they track down that mysterious man who, if only he can only be located and Continue reading CAPSULE: ZENITH (2010) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE RUM DIARY (2011)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Johnny Depp, , Amber Heard, Michael Rispoli, Giovanni Ribisi

PLOT: An alcoholic journalist goes to Puerto Rico where he encounters unscrupulous capitalists and bottomless mini-bars.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: The confluence of three offbeat talents—-seldom seen cult auteur (How to Get Ahead in Advertising) directing quirk king Johnny Depp in an adaptation of a semi-autobiographical novel by gonzo godfather —produces a movie that’s far more conventional than you might have guessed.

Still from The Rum Diary (2011)

COMMENTS: For better or worse, it’s impossible to avoid comparing Rum Diary (unfavorably) with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The film’s producers can’t complain the comparison is unfair, because they cut a trailer that’s obviously aimed at hooking Loathing fans: it’s filled with boozy shenanigans, a bowling ball knocking down ten pin rum bottles, and Johnny Depp promising, in his best deadpan Hunter S. Thompson drawl, “all of this might sound like some crazed hallucination…” Diary even contains a mild LSD trip sequence that sees Michael Rispoli’s tongue extend six feet in the air “like an accusatory giblet”; of course, this sixty seconds of psychedelics occupies a prime place in the marketing scheme. There’s also a scene with a voodoo priestess who coughs up frogs—and that’s about it on the weirdness front. The rest of the movie is a series of drunken war stories in which part-time journalist, full-time imbiber and would-be novelist Paul Kemp (Thompson’s alter-ego, played by Depp as a less manic and assured Raoul Duke) worries about “finding his voice” and flirts with joining up with the “Bastards.” Why the Bastards (represented by real-estate developer Aaron Eckhart) are so keen to recruit horoscope writer Kemp into their venal cabal isn’t clear; corrupting idealists is what makes them Bastards, I guess. Also not clear is what’s so darn evil about their plan to build a hotel that would supply thousands of jobs for the local populace on land previously only used for the noble purpose of naval test bombing. Their marketing plan, which would involve Kemp slipping some favorable words into his columns, is unethical, sure, but hardly a screaming headline, page one outrage. But the scheme’s investors smoke cigars and complain about Negros and Communists, so they are pretty clearly villainous. Despite their wickedness, though, the only moral objections Kemp actually raises have to do with the way Eckhart treats his flighty, arm-candy lover (Amber Heard, who looks fabulous in a bikini but disappears from the movie like a neglected girlfriend). Joining Depp, Eckhart and Heard are Rispoli and Giovanni Ribisi as a couple of colorful drinking buddies (Rispoli plays his photographer role like a 1940s New York City cabbie, while Nazi-obsessed basket case Ribisi affects an annoying whine). The trio’s wandering adventures build to a remarkable anticlimax. None of the plot lines dangled off this tropical pier snag a catch, but Kemp/Thompson does eventually find his literary voice—too bad for us it only happens after he’s finished narrating this tale. It’s pleasant to see Depp reprise his role as Thompson, and there are memorable lines of dialogue and set pieces (all of which find their way into the trailer). But the movie sips at drunken insanity rather than gulping it down; it never goes four-sheets-to-the-wind crazy. The tone of muted madness here doesn’t do justice to Thompson’s gonzo spirit. Call it “Mild Concern and Dislike in San Juan.”

“The Rum Diary” was written by Thompson some time in the late 1950s or early 1960s but was rejected by several publishers. Johnny Depp reportedly discovered the manuscript in Thompson’s basement while he was researching the writer’s mannerisms in preparation for his role in Fear and Loathing. Depp encouraged Thompson to revise the lost novel; it was published in 1998. The actor also served as executive producer for this adaptation.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…has no mighty gonzo wind… it leaves our freak flag limp.”–David Edelstein, New York Magazine (contemporaneous)

Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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2011 is winding down, and we at 366 are already starting to obsess about year-end “best of” lists and stuff like that.  There’s still much fresh weirdness to take in before the big ball falls on December 31.  So, forgive us if things are a bit messy around here.  We’re not 100% sure what we’ll feature next week, but you will see reports on two out of three of the following new offerings: The Rum Diary, the sorta-pseudo prequel to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Zenith, an independent mindbender about the Illuminati and their possible role in a future in which people buy illegal drugs in order to make them feel pain; and/or Father’s Day, the absurdist mock-grindhouse feature about a patricidal serial killer.  Just because we’re focusing on new releases, however, doesn’t mean we’re only covering new movies, because (thanks to the Criterion Collection) we’ll also be visiting Jean Vigo’s influential and forbidden 1933 anarchist boarding school featurette Zéro de conduite (courtesy of “The Complete Jean Vigo” disc), as well as the anti-vivisectionist 1932 horror classic Island of Lost Souls (with Charles Laughton as the mad scientist and as the “Sayer of the Law”).

We had another challenge time determining the Weirdest Search Term of the Week; lots of candidates, but nothing really stood out as mind-boggling.  We start with the English-as-a-Second-Language porn surfers, who dependably supply plenty of weird (and frequently unprintable and disturbing) search terms each and every week.  This time around they bring us the indecisive “seks anal bull bill boll” and the cryptically erotic “sexing black toto story in nigeria.”  Because picking the peculiar porn query as the weekly winner is too predictable, so we turn to other head-scratching searches for our finalists, starting with the declarative “wealthy powerful older fat women lust for gladiators.”  Unexpected, interesting information, that.  But our official winner for Weirdest Search of the Week is the honest (?) but unexpected query “do reptilians wear hoodies,” which earned bonus points because we actually provide the answer to that question in this review.

Here’s the neglected but still growing reader-suggested review queue: Kairo [AKA Pulse];The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among  others); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; The Bride of  Frank; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

Saturday Short, Shorts

SATURDAY SHORT: ODILON REDON (1995)

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A father and son witness a train wreck, and compete for the affection of the only survivor. Like much of Maddin‘s work, this short was well received at the Toronto International Film Festival.  This film is also known by the long title The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity: Odilon Redon.

The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity (Odilon Redon) from Guy Maddin on Vimeo.

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 11/4/2011

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A look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

Sleepwalker (est. 2012): About a disappearance in a creepy Southwestern town.  The filmmmakers describe the tone as “David Lynch, Hitchcock, and The Twilight Zone mashed up into a strange and surreal puzzle…”  They are soliciting funds via Kickstarter; for as little as a $1 contribution, you could become a micro-movie-mogul.  Sleepwalker Kickstarter page.

NEW ON DVD:

“The Artists: The Best of Kino’s Silent Classics”: An interesting box containing seven classic silents.  The crucial title for weirdophiles is Metropolis (1927); however, be warned that the version included in this set is the 2002 restoration, not Kino’s “Complete” Metropolis from 2010 (reviewed here).  The other films in the star-oriented bundle are Rudolph Valentino in Blood and Sand (1922); Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Baghdad (1924); Clara Bow as the original It (1927) girl; 1920’s Dr. Jeckyll & Mister Hyde with John Barrymore, the earliest screen adaptation of the classic tale; Lillian Gish in D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (1919); and Buster Keaton’s The General (1926).  Buy “The Artists: The Best Of Kino’s Silent Classics Vol. 1”.

Bunraku (2010): Read our capsule review.  This expressionistic comic book detailing the adventures of a samurai and a cowboy in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world is plot-lite but pretty. Buy Bunraku.

Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010):  Mark Hartley’s followup to Not Quite Hollywood, his surprise hit “Ozploitation” documentary (focusing on obscure Australian exploitation movies) travels this time to the more familiar (to trash aficionados) terrain of the Philippines.  Topics covered include the /Jack Hill women-in-prison flicks, Eddie Romero’s beastly “Blood Island” horrors, and the dwarf James Bond parody For Your Height Only, with interviews from talking heads like Corman and the ubiquitous John Landis.  Buy Machete Maidens Unleashed!.

The Nutcracker: The Untold Story [AKA The Nutcracker in 3-D] (2010):  A version of the Nutcracker re-imagined as a sci-fi-styled quest to restore the deposed Nutcracker to his throne, usurped by the Rat King.  A huge holiday flop in 2010, but of the nearly universally negative reviews, the one that caught our attention was Peter Hartlaub’s notice for the San Francisco Chronicle: “Imagine watching Tchaikovsky’s ballet after taking a handful of peyote…”  It cost a reported $90 million to create, but made back less than $200,000 at the box office.  Of course, the film is not in 3-D on home video, a happy accident that allows Universal to rename this release as The Untold Story.  Buy The Nutcracker: The Untold Story.

Tabloid (2011):  Read our capsule review.  Errol Morris’ eccentric documentary about the UK tabloid sensation caused when a former Miss Wyoming (allegedly) kidnapped a Mormon missionary, tied him to the bed for a weekend, and forced him to have sex with her repeatedly. Buy Tabloid.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Bunraku (2010):  See description in DVD above.  Buy Bunraku [Blu-ray].

The Nutcracker: The Untold Story [AKA The Nutcracker in 3-D] (2010):  See description in DVD above. Buy The Nutcracker: The Untold Story [Blu-ray].

ALBUMS:

Crazy Clown Time: We don’t usually mention music here, but we’ll make an exception in this case: it’s David Lynch‘s debut album.  At the age of 65, Mr. Eraserhead has released his first techno album (yes, he sings—well, mostly recites into a vocoder—most of the lyrics).  We’re not music critics, so we won’t comment on the merit of the beats, or demand Dave get out of the studio and back on the set where he belongs.  The album (which officially drops Nov. 8) can currently be streamed via National Public Radio’s website.  Pre-order David Lynch’s album “Crazy Clown Time”.

WEB SERIES:

The Funny Man: We reported on Jake Barsha’s planned horror thriller featuring a psychopathic comedian serial killer some time ago.  It seems the project has shifted from a feature film to a (quite successful, it seems) 10 episode webseries on dailymotion.   All ten episodes should be up by the time you read this; here’s a link to episode 1 for horror fans.

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Alice in Wonderland (1972): This Wonderland adaptation made by the BBC has a middle-of-the-road reputation, but some may want to see it for the casting (which is the way they always suck you into seeing yet another version of Alice): Sir Ralph Richardson as the Caterpillar, Peter Sellers as the March Hare, Dudley Moore as the Doormouse.  It’s also a curiosity in that it’s a musical, with a score composed by the great John Barry, lyrics by his Bond collaborator Don Black.  Watch Alice in Wonderland (1972) free on YouTube.

What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.

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