Tag Archives: 2013

Canonically Weird (The List)

172. ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW (2013)

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“Imaginate, what we can do, when Tomorrow there’s another YOU?
On the other side, we will realize
Wishes really do come, come true.

Imaginate, imaginate, imaginate, imaginate, imaginate,
like we can do, wishes really do come true…”

“Imaginate” (from the Escape from Tomorrow soundtrack)

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DIRECTED BY: Randy Moore

FEATURING: Roy Abramsohn, Elena Schuber, Katelynn Rodriguez, Jack Dalton, Danielle Safady, Ahnnet Mahendru, Alison Lees-Taylor, Stass Klassen

PLOT: A day in the life of an American family vacationing at Disneyland… or Walt Disney World… or at least some Disney related theme park. Only this day starts out with Jim (Roy Abramsohn) getting a call from his boss, who tells him that there’s no job for him to return to. Things can only go downhill from there, but everything is filtered through a cheerful veneer. From a spreading cat-flu epidemic, to stalking teen-age girls, brainwashing by Park cyborgs, it just goes to show that “bad things happen everywhere”… even in the Happiest Place On Earth.

Still from Escape from Tomorrow (2013)
BACKGROUND:

  • Escape from Tomorrow was the “buzz” picture at the 2013 Sundance film festival, with most of the talk centering around the fact that much of the movie was shot surreptitiously at Disney World by the crew while posing as ordinary tourists.
  • The release of Canon’s 5D Mark II Digital SLR camera was the spur to get the movie made; the image quality was cinematic and the cameras small enough to allow a crew to shoot surreptitiously.
  • Pre-production was meticulous, every shot planned and blocked out weeks ahead of time, due to the limited window of opportunity, even to the point of charting out the position of the sun.
  • Post-production was done in South Korea, mainly due to the editor and producer’s contacts, but also to not allow word of the project to get near Disney.
  • Although it was widely assumed that Disney’s notoriously litigious legal department would act swiftly to stop distribution of Escape from Tomorrow, the corporation decided the wiser strategy to protect their brand was to ignore this small independent film rather than bringing additional attention to it.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: An immobile Jim, head replaced by a mini-Epcot dome, uniquely captures the tone and intent of the film.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD:The film’s subversive commentary on Disney’s hold on the collective imagination has a solid bite that has not been previously approached as directly as it is here, by actually shooting on Disney property completely in plain sight – in the belly of the Beast, so to speak. The black and white photography also helps in making that familiar world appear alien. Plus, a mad scientist turns a guy’s head into the Epcot center.


Escape from Tomorrow original trailer

COMMENTS: “Jim, listen to me. Don’t let your imagination run wild. It’s a transitional period.”

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Capsules

CAPSULE: WRONG COPS (2013)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Mark Burnham, , Arden Myrin, , , Marilyn Manson

PLOT: Los Angeles cops sell weed (hidden in dead rats), harass aerobics dancers, blackmail each other, and compose electronica; anything but fight crime.

Still from Wrong Cops (2013)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: With a few exceptions (like a fatally wounded music aficionado who refuses to kick the bucket), this black comedy is missing the unique conceptual meta-humor of Quentin Dupieux’s first two movies. It plays more like mildly edgy sketch comedy—it’s almost mainstream.

COMMENTS: One strange lesson you’ll take out of Wrong Cops is that American peace officers love European-style techno music. The other lesson is that, although Quentin Dupieux does surreal comedy well, his general outlook is too bemusedly sunny (a la genial absurdists like ) to create a truly biting satire about policemen behaving badly. True nastiness doesn’t seem to be in Dupieux’s makeup, so Wrong Cops ends up being more like Bad Grandpa than Bad Lieutenant. Although the movie’s cops are intended to be morally corrupt, only Mark Burnham‘s Officer Duke comes off as totally depraved; Eric Wareheim’s breast-obsessed patrolman, for example, is far too teddy-bearish to disturb, even when he’s forcing women to disrobe at gunpoint. The desire to make a black comedy about cops behaving badly mixes poorly with this director’s basic lack of cynicism. (The unexpected sweetness of Dolph’s search for his missing dog in Wrong was a better fit for his sensibilities.) The not-quite-dead body that is never disposed of is one dark moment that works, as is Officer Duke’s spontaneous, pot-fueled eulogy about Hell on Earth that closes the film, but in general the somewhat flat comedy routines are more mild than wild.

With five cops to follow (plus a pair of gay officers who show up occasionally but don’t have a plotline of their own), there’s a lot going on, and Dupieux makes the movie into something of a L.A. block party by inviting a number of recognizable bit players. Eric Roberts stops by as a movie director, and is in there for a few minutes, while her “Twin Peaks” hubby has a slightly larger role as a police chief presiding at a funeral. Marilyn Manson (out of makeup) plays a hassled teenager; despite the fact that he’s in his forties, he is actually surprisingly convincing as a misfit kid. Unobtrusive but obvious references to Rubber and Wrong are also placed in the movie for Dupieux fans. The sprawling cast adds to the sketch-comedy feel, although the overarching plot (which is partly told out of sequence) is more carefully constructed than most viewers give it credit for: if Officer Duke never harasses David Delores Frank about his taste in electronica, the movie’s big tragedy never occurs. Dupieux’s core fan base will probably be pleased with this entry—and it does have its weirdly funny moments—but personally, I’m getting diminishing returns on his unique sense of humor with each subsequent film. The abstract meta-comedy that seemed rule-rewriting in Rubber has become expected and merely entertaining by the time we reach Wrong Cops.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…tonally weird and totally forgettable.”–Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle

Miscellanea

366 UNDERGROUND: WAY DOWN IN CHINATOWN (2013)

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Way Down in Chinatown 1

DIRECTED BY: Eric Michael Kochmer

FEATURING: Justin Dray, Stephanie Sanditz, Lisa Loring, Nancy Wolfe, Ashli Haynes

PLOT: Playwright Victor Mitchum (Dray) and his director/wife Jessica Mitchum (Sanditz) receive funding to produce their new play, “Apocalypse Tomorrow.” As they start auditions for the play, the real Apocalypse begins, involving worms taking human form and the song ‘Goodnight, Irene’.

Click to purchase the Way Down in Chinatown DVD

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It takes more than avant-garde pretensions to make a good weird film. This is strictly a ‘love it or hate it’ movie, and I completely hated it within the first 10 minutes.

COMMENTS: One of the worst P.O.S. that I’ve had occasion to watch; yet another project to give the term ‘avant-garde’ a bad reputation. Essentially a play adapted for film, it takes all the worst aspects of experimental cinema/theater and throws it in your lap. If you’re a fan of German Expressionism, you’re better off finding the real thing to watch instead of half-baked ‘tributes’ like this that cheapen and taint the term.

One could watch the film ironically, and see it as a parody of self-absorbed, pseudo-intellectual tripe that tries to pass itself off as deep and meaningful; but the film is so serious that even watching it ironically is exhausting and unsatisfying. Not even the presence of Lisa Loring (Wednesday Addams from “The Addams Family” television show) elevates this to camp value.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Surreal, impressionistic, and irrevocably bizarre, Kochmer’s artistic approach to the eccentric is reminiscent of a David Lynch expose.”–Dave Gammon, Horrornews.net (contemporaneous)

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: UNDER THE SKIN (2013)

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DIRECTED BY: Jonathan Glazer

FEATURING: , Adam Pearson

PLOT: An alien in the form of a beautiful woman skulks around Glasgow in a white van hunting for single men, whom she collects for some unknown but supposedly nefarious purpose. Eventually she becomes confused by her own temporary humanity, and her physical body starts to shut down.

under-the-skin-UTS_Still_2_hi-res_rgb
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: With an acute vision and a puzzling but highly rewarding plot, Under the Skin is easily among the best of 2014, and may well turn out to be the weirdest. The action moves slowly, but is filled with wonderfully bizarre imagery and powerful space-y scoundscapes. Its storytelling is inventive, and nothing is obvious.

COMMENTS: Under the Skin opens with abstract images of space and birth, with the sounds of a woman learning to talk played over the ambient score. An unnamed biker pulls a dead woman into a van, in which a naked Scarlett Johansson takes on her appearance, and her clothing. The next day, she begins her unexplained quest for bodies, driving around and innocently asking for directions while slyly prying into her prey’s background. If they have girlfriends or family, or are on their way to meet friends, she leaves, but if she determines them to be alone and single, she invites them back to her weird abandoned-looking house. Entranced by her beauty, they follow her blindly until they are absorbed into the floor, sinking into black goo. When she comes upon a disfigured young man (Adam Pearson), she falters in her single-minded mission, and begins to look for human experiences, though she is generally unable to understand them.

Adamantly maintaining a “show, don’t tell” attitude, Jonathan Glazer teases his audience with nibbles of information, encouraging us to assemble the puzzle pieces ourselves. This type of storytelling forces us to carefully consider every image presented, questioning characters’ unstated motives and giving a close reading to each scene. The movie is almost palpably quiet, relying little on dialogue and offering a mix of natural background noise and unearthly music, leaving a lot of room for inner thought to fill in the stillness. We must connect how the silent biker is related to Scarlett Johansson’s character, what purpose the abducted men serve, what prompts the protagonist to abandon her hunt, and why she seems to be struggling with her alien body. All of this information is made available to us, if we pay attention. Every shot is precise and deliberate, with many scenes carefully constructed through the use of hidden cameras—so many of the men interacting with Johansson are at first unaware that they are in a movie. There is an intriguing combination of gritty, rainy urban areas, dark but lush forests, and weird alien spaces, plus the juxtaposition of hidden-camera verism and sci-fi unreality. It is at once unsettling, confusing, exciting, and utterly compelling.

This is, for the most part, understated weirdness. Glazer’s non-expository, matter-of-fact style belies how inventive the film’s approach really is. He reveals an alien’s view of our world, and often makes humanity as strange to his audience as it is to his protagonist. The men’s thickly-accented, slang-ridden speech is often confusing (to this American viewer, that is), and common human rituals are made to appear odd. Why do we wear make-up? Or eat chocolate cake? Or have sex? An extended sequence shows a family spending time on a rocky beach, but the parents leave their toddler on the shore as they swim out to save their drowning dog. The protagonist watches this dramatic scene from afar, a nonpartisan observer, not so much uncaring as she is disengaged, never moved to help or hinder because their plight just isn’t related to her. Even the considerable nudity is approached with a sense of detachment, and made to be completely nonsexual despite the context. Though her origins are never actually mentioned, there is no doubt she is an alien creature, a hunter given human form but never made to understand the person she inhabits. The sick joke is that while visually she embodies the human equivalent of prey—female, beautiful, small, alone—inwardly she is a powerful predator. Under the Skin is a strange and dark thriller that manages to wryly comment on gender stereotyping and (straight) sexual relations without actually delivering any kind of message. As a film, as a story, as a work of art, it simply is.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Under the Skin sometimes feels like it should be more elusive, but the moment you try and lock it down it slips away from you, going off into weirder territory.” –Matt Prigge, Metro

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS (2013)

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DIRECTED BY:  and

FEATURING: Klaus Tange, Birgit Yew, Anna D’Annunzio, Hans de Munter

PLOT: Dan Kristensen comes home from a business trip to find that his wife is missing. His investigation into her disappearance leads him down an intricate rabbit hole of murder, sex, scopophilia, demonic possession, and, especially, confusion, as he moves within the impossible spaces of his mysterious apartment building.

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: With its influx of surreal imagery, bizarre plot twists, aggressive soundscapes, and grunge-decadence sets, the weirdness of The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears is not in question. Its place on the List is hard to solidify, however, as its weirdness doesn’t quite compensate for the dragged-out pace, irrelevant script, and unnecessary repetition.

COMMENTS: Hurling images of kinky sex, paranormal apparitions, and violent attacks before the viewer’s eyes, all edited in quick-cut fashion: The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears is quite the experience. Its filmmakers seek to unsettle and disorient, and at that they are certainly successful. Just as the regular-Joe protagonist is thrust into this impossible situation, the audience is taken on a strange and terrible journey that makes very little sense, and frustrates more than it entertains. As a whole the film is very scattered, peppered with moments of brilliance between overwrought segments of confusion. Cattet and Forzani seem to have opened up a big book of experimental film techniques and just took a stab at every trick they happened upon. Some sequences are marvelous, including a dream wherein Dan becomes stuck in a time loop, meeting and killing multiple versions of himself over and over. Another shows an older woman losing her husband to a sinister force in the room above the bedroom, as she is left with nothing to do but listen to the strange noises coming through the ceiling. Still another is filmed in a sort of fuzzy black and white time-lapse, as a woman is chased by an unknown demonic figure. Other sequences feel completely pointless, as various asides and barely connected subplots and characters appear and disappear on a whim.

This film never allows its audience to find their footing, but it also never really rewards the more loyal viewer for sticking around til the end. It was at first engrossing for its emphatic—almost combative—illegibility, bullying its way through numerous red herring plot twists and presenting an extreme giallo-throwback aesthetic. The sets are beyond beautiful, with most of the action taking place within Dan’s apartment building, surrounded by Art Nouveau filigree and deep, heady color combinations. The sheer number of bizarre happenings and nontraditional cinematic techniques employed is honestly impressive, but the constant flood of ideas eventually becomes tiresome, especially as the story (a term I use loosely here) proves more and more cyclical. There’s little momentum, and little payoff for a film that stretches very thinly over its 102 minutes. It’s clear the film would have worked better as a short, where Cattet and Forzani could have packed in all of their artsy grindhouse weirdness without wearing out their welcome. But for diehard giallo fans, it’d definitely be worth it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Formally experimental, headily disorienting and an aesthete’s wet dream, The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears is a schizophrenic blend of arthouse and charnelhouse.” –Anton Bitel, Sight & Sound Magazine