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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: TURBO KID (2015)

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DIRECTED BY: François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell

FEATURING: Munro Chambers, Laurence Leboeuf, Aaron Jeffrey, Edwin Wright, Michael Ironside

PLOT: In a post-apocalyptic future, a young kid discovers the fighting gear of the legendary Turbo Rider and sets out to topple the tyrannical overlord Zeus.

Still from Turbo Kid (2015)

COMMENTS: Turbo Kid lays down its ace right from the get-go, as a gravel-voiced narrator describes the grim vista of a tomorrow carved out by nuclear winter and acid rain. “This is the future,” he intones, as a boy on a BMX bike pedals into frame. “This is the year 1997.” Time for a quick double-check on the year this came out… yep, and we are truly underway.

The 366 Weird Movies archive does not lack for films from four decades ago that employed a low budget and suitably barren locations to depict the world-after-the-end-of-the-world to audiences. (Just off the top of my head, I can think of three such movies that I myself have reviewed.) Recent years have seen several attempts at nostalgic pastiche, but Turbo Kid stands alone for setting “80s desolation romp” as a target. In particular, it’s the product of the serial nostalgist collective Road Kill Super Stars (aka RKSS, which consisted of this film’s three writer-directors, until Simard was booted last year for criminal sex charges); when their proposed contribution to the anthology The ABCs of Death was rejected, they had more than enough ideas to expand the concept into a feature.

Considering that Turbo Kid’s sole objective is to recapture that special 1980s mix of futuristic nihilism and naïve can-do spirit, the effort is remarkably successful. The empty fields and gravel pits in Quebec that stand in for the future’s wastelands are suitably desolate. Costuming and production design tap into the mixed milieu of flashy colors and big hair roaming around what look like abandoned sewage treatment plants. Plenty of props serve as icons of the era, from Rubik’s cubes and Nintendo Power Gloves to the ubiquitous BMX bikes that serve as everyone’s transportation around the barren wasteland. (Not that bicycles would be the most unusual form of transport to dominate the coming hellscape.) Plus, the synth-fueled musical score by Le Matos is both pitch-perfect and tiresome in a way that’s era-appropriate, and is supplemented in the font-of-the-future opening credits with the most fitting rock song choice imaginable, a fist-pumping anthem from Stan Bush (of “The Touch” fame). If you’re fooled for a moment into thinking that this was churned out in 1985, that’s fully intended, because Turbo Kid doesn’t want to just capture the feel of these 80s low-budget sci-fi epics; it wants to be one of them.

This commitment to verisimilitude extends to the film’s cast, who play everything straight enough to sell the movie’s central joke. Chambers is just the right kind of bland hero, not looking anywhere as young as his outward level of maturity, but fully selling The Kid’s sweet ignorance. As his sidekick and love interest, Leboeuf’s perky Apple turns out to be the most delightful, refreshing thing that Turbo Kid brings to the party. Her indefatigably chipper vibe initially seems like it’s going to become annoying fast but quickly becomes the animating force in the film, with a naively joyful spirit that makes a crucial revelation about her character land with a nod of approval instead of a roll of the eyes. And then there’s the filmmakers’ most crucial piece of casting, landing master of scene-chewing villainy Michael freaking Ironside to do the thing he does. Undoubtedly, he could play this part in his sleep, but while his work here is effortless, he’s in no way phoning it in. He plays the heel with all the acid-tongued vigor of his younger days, in which he no doubt celebrated getting cast over Kurtwood Smith. Ironside even makes a virtue of the directors’ most questionable choice, surrounding Zeus with a less-than-skillful set of minions who leave the overlord shy of his most supervillainous aspirations. It’s a bit of postmodern irony that’s out of place in Turbo Kid’s otherwise resolute commitment to the homage.

Perhaps the thing that most distinguishes Turbo Kid from its ancestors is the remarkable level of gore. It’s not as though these films are devoid of viscera, as any Mad Max entry will demonstrate, but RKSS is relentless, with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of fake blood spewed via every manner of stabbing, decapitation, and explosion. This festival of fluid is impossible to take seriously, presented in an extremely cartoonish manner, and resembling nothing so much as Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days. It can be outright funny at times, like a sawblade on a helmet that turns its victim into a screw top, or a body that lands squarely atop another person like the most unwieldy hat. So it’s one of Turbo Kid’s better surprises that the orgy of violence ends up showcasing the film’s sweetest moment, a romantic tableau that’s only enhanced by the surrounding rain of blood.

Given the opportunity for parody, Turbo Kid opts instead for direct mimicry, an odd choice by itself, but one that makes the finished film more earnest than weird. That does make the film a charming watch, if a weightless one. That 80s trash was pretty fun, and this re-creation is pretty fun, too. It’s a low bar, but clearing it is a decent way to spend an hour or two.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a wildly discordant, schizophrenically adorable, gore-soaked fantasy set in an deserted industrial wasteland… Add in the other nutso, hilarious touches, and you have the garnish you need to turn your sweet tale of friendship into a Friday night blood feast.” – Patrick Feutz, Inside the Blue Paint

(This movie was nominated for review by film izle. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.) 

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    APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MEGALOPOLIS (2024) – THREE TAKES

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    Keep reading for alternate takes from Giles Edwards and El Rob Hubbard

    DIRECTED BY: Francis Ford Coppola

    FEATURING: Adam Driver, , Jon Voight, , , , Lawrence Fishburne

    PLOT: In mythical New Rome, inventor Caesar Catalina can stop time and has invented some kind of miracle substance called “Megalon,” but demagogues and rivals scheme to ruin him.

    Still from Megalopolis (2024)

    WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Megalopolis is a movie conjured by an 85-year old film genius that feels like it could have been made by a fresh film school graduate, if someone had given the kid $120 million dollars and tasked him with making an Important Statement. And I mean this all as a compliment: Coppola here is as brash, fearless, ambitious, and pot-dazzled as a twenty-four-year old tyro with stars in his eyes. Acting your age is for politicians, not filmmakers. The resulting movie is a bizarre mashup of Titus (1999), Southland Tales (2006), and Metropolis (1927), and if the entire city of New Rome constantly glows with a golden hue, it’s because the movie’s bananas.

    GREGORY J. SMALLEY COMMENTS: Francis Ford Coppola conceived of the idea for Megalopolis as early as 1977, so you would think he would have had some of it plotted out already when it came time to sell his winery and finance the film in 2019. But, by all appearances, he decided to throw away whatever notes he had made in the previous decades and just wing it. The movie is plotted like a Shakespearean epic—when it’s plotted at all. The basic idea is that America today is a lot like Rome as it neared the end of the Republic and slid into the grandest despotism the world had ever seen. The solution, in Coppola’s view? We need more dialogue, because, as Caesar says, ” when we ask these questions, when there’s a dialogue about them, that basically is a utopia.” Also, it might help to have the unexplained ability to stop time, and to develop some new material called Megalon, which can do everything from design evening gowns for virginal pop stars to form the basic building blocks of the conveyor belts in an inner city Garden of Eden. Sounds like a job for Elon Musk—no, wait, we were shooting for a utopia.

    Cesar Catilina (Driver) is some kind of hard-drinking Nobel Prize winner/architect who sleeps with socialites and reporters. Franklyn Cicero (Esposito) is the no-nonsense mayor who hates Cesar because he’s not pragmatic enough; his bright daughter Julia (Emmanuel) wants to sleep with Cesar (and support his utopian dreams). Cesar’s uncle, Crassus (Voight), is the richest man in New Rome, with all the altruistic humility that position implies. He marries entertainment reporter Wow Platinum (Plaza), who has also been sleeping with Cesar. Crassus’ son, the brilliantly named Clodio Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MEGALOPOLIS (2024) – THREE TAKES →

    Apocryphally Weird

    44*. POOR THINGS (2023)

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    “Nature gives children great emotional resilience to help them survive the oppressions of being small, but these oppressions still make them into slightly insane adults, either mad to seize all the power they once lacked or (more usually) mad to avoid it.”― Alasdair Gray, Poor Things

    DIRECTED BY: Yorgos Lanthimos

    FEATURING: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef

    PLOT: When a pregnant woman throws herself off a bridge, scientist Godwin Baxter spots an opportunity to conduct an unprecedented science experiment by transplanting the fetal brain into her mother’s body. The result is Bella, a woman with a grown-up physique and an infantile mind, who develops at a rapid rate and soon discovers many adult pleasures not otherwise accessible to an impressionable youth. Speaking with a frankness about herself and others that flies in the face of standards for propriety, she leaves home to explore the world, first in the company of caddish attorney Duncan Wedderburn and later as an employee in a Parisian bordello, returning  home  to discover that a figure from her past has located her.

    Still from poor things (2023)

    BACKGROUND:

    INDELIBLE IMAGE: Bella’s very raison d’etre is to explore the world on her terms, following her bliss and flagrantly disregarding social niceties. Nothing better expresses this impulse than her spin on the dance floor, staggering about in full thrall to the music, limbs flung in every direction, and doing so with such verve and joy that even Mark Ruffalo’s Duncan is compelled to join in.

    TWO WEIRD THINGS: Bubble burps; “I have to go punch that baby”

    WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: A spectacular blend of quirky plot, offbeat setting, and demented execution, Poor Things is joyously inappropriate. In a film where virtually nobody behaves according to convention, the heroine is someone who casts aside any semblance of decorum in favor of a life lived as she chooses. The result is an unexpected blend of Frankenstein, Big, Candide, and The Opening of Misty Beethoven.

    Official trailer for Poor Things

    COMMENTS: The most dreaded phase for parents rearing a child is Continue reading 44*. POOR THINGS (2023) →

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    APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: POOR THINGS (2023)

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    Poor Things has been promoted onto the Apocryphally Weird movie list. Please read the official entry.

    DIRECTED BY:

    FEATURING: , , , Ramy Youssef

    PLOT: Bella, a mad scientist’s creation with the mind of a child (literally), runs off with a rakish attorney to explore the world.

    Still from Poor Things (2023)

    WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA:  A bizarre reanimation of Frankenstein played as a sexually-charged, surreal social satire, Poor Things is packed with mad science and madder art. There’s even a crazy dance scene that trumps the one from Dogtooth.

    COMMENTS: In Poor Things, Emma Stone embodies Bella, an experiment of the Frankensteinish Dr. Godwin (whom she calls “God”). She begins the tale with the mind of a child, for extraordinary reasons that may already have been spoiled for you by the online conversation (I won’t spoil things further, in case you’ve somehow managed to avoid them). Since this is a darkly whimsical fantasy/science fiction hybrid, her mind races towards adulthood at an allegorical pace: she goes from throwing tantrums and delighting in the sponginess of a squished frog to sipping gin and studying for anatomy exams in mere months. She begins the film clunking humorously around Godwin’s estate, cared for by the beyond-eccentric doctor and his meek assistant Max, who becomes smitten with the “very pretty retard”; but as she gains self-awareness (including, crucially, awareness of her clitoris), she demands to see the outside world. In the company of hedonistic playboy (a brilliantly foppish and comic Ruffalo), she adventures through a steampunk 19th-century Lisbon, takes a trip on a cruise ship, and interns at Parisian brothel before returning to London a wiser woman, ready to face what she is and to wrap up the first act’s carefully planted plot points.

    It’s easy to see why the three supporting males are all mesmerized by Bella in their own ways: she is an utterly unique creation, unburdened by society’s expectations of proper behavior— especially in regards to sex, which she refers to as “furious jumping.” She journeys from childlike innocence to an outsider’s adulthood in the course of two-an-a-half hours. Joining her on her quest of self-discovery are the aforementioned Ruffalo (who will likely earn a best supporting actor nod), Max (Youssef, likable if largely inefficacious, he’s the character using a conventional moral lens to examine the questionable ethics of the entire scenario), and the astoundingly conceived Godwin (Dafoe). The good (?) doctor sports a face crisscrossed with a lattice of scars that makes him look like a mad surgeon gave up trying to make his head into a jigsaw puzzle halfway through, has a gastric disorder that makes him belch large bubbles after eating, and reveals a fancifully cruel backstory that explains his bizarrely empirical outlook on life. Stone, Ruffalo and Dafoe are all great; Youssef is more than adequate; and while a few of the supporting performers have difficulty striking the odd comic tone Lanthimos is going for, the acting in general is astonishingly good. Based on Alasdair Grey’s novel, the script mixes overly-elaborate locutions (“Hence, I seek employment at your musty-smelling establishment of good-time fornication”) with punchy one-liners (like, “I must go punch that baby,”) mostly delivered by Stone—although the increasingly frustrated Ruffalo gets off some fine obscenity-laced tirades.

    The production design keeps pace with the acting quality, capturing the insanity of the scenario. Godwin’s mansion is a Victorian cabinet of curiosities (including such curiosities as a chicken-dog); Lisbon has a touch of steampunk with cable cars in the sky; the snowy streets of Paris house brothels with facades like cathedrals. Sets are elaborate, with yellow and blue trompe l’oeil clouds blanketing the sky. The short intertitles separating the chapters are minature works of art. Lanthimos continues to indulge the cinematographic experiments he began in 2018’s The Favourite. Some are purposeful: the film is in black and white while Bella is protected in Godwin’s care, and turns to vivid color once she seizes her independence. Others seem arbitrary: we sometimes view the action through a peephole matte (which sometimes signals imprisonment, but not always), or through an ultra-wide fisheye lens (used for panoramas—I think this look has become part of Lanthimos’ standard toolkit at this point). The visual switches suggest Bella’s disorientation in a world that’s entirely new to her, but I confess I found them sometimes distracting. Jerskin Fendrix’s nearly-atonal score, which sounding like classical snippets designed by avant-garde A.I., played by automatons on faulty pump organs or badly-tuned guitars, accomplishes the same distancing feat more efficiently.

    Poor Things is a meticulously-created world, a twisted Victorian fairy tale set inside a fanciful snow globe. Gleefully disdaining polite manners and amoral on its surface, it gradually develops empathy and posits one value as supreme above all: freedom of choice. Like the Portuguese custard tarts Bella learns to scarf in one bite, Poor Things is incredibly rich.

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “I’ve heard a few people say that, based on the trailer, Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest film, Poor Things, looks too weird for their tastes. To be honest, the trailer made me think this ‘gender-bending Frankenstein’, as it’s being sold, looked too weird for my tastes… It is weird, no doubt. But it is the sort of weird we can do. And not so weird that I had to Google it afterwards.”–Deborah Ross, The Spectator (contemporaneous)

    It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

    IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: CAST A DEADLY SPELL (1991)

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    DIRECTED BY: Martin Campbell

    FEATURING: Fred Ward, Julianne Moore, David Warner, Clancy Brown, Alexandra Powers

    PLOT: Private eye H. Phillip Lovecraft, who shuns magic in favor of old-school detective skills, searches Los Angeles for a missing grimoire.

    Still from Cast A Deadly Spell (1991)

    COMMENTS: Films set in other times and places sometimes turn to text prologues to help set the scene. The more that needs to be explained, the more convoluted and tedious the word scroll can become. So you have to admire the economical way Cast a Deadly Spell lays out the rules of the world we’re about to enter: “Los Angeles, 1948. Everyone does magic.” Boom, we’re done. Premise established, The Big Sleep meets Evil Dead, let’s do this thing.

    At a surface level, the blend is just cheeky enough to work. Despite the specific references to H. P. Lovecraft (the detective and the author share a name, and little else) and his works (specifically, the Necronomicon, which serves as this film’s MacGuffin), Cast a Deadly Spell is content to pilfer its magic from any source handy. Lovecraft’s landlord and occasional girl Friday is a Caribbean voodoo priestess. Zombies are shipped in from West Africa to perform heavy manual labor until their bodies give out. (The racial element to this practice is left unexplored.) Unicorns are hunted for sport, gremlins could lurk beneath any car hood, and everyone uses supernatural powers to perform basic tasks: lighting cigarettes, carrying trays, filing papers and the like. It’s simple stuff, but it does create a strong feel of a world where magic is commonplace and even mundane.

    Where the film truly succeeds is in capturing the 1940s crime thriller milieu. Screenwriter Joseph Dougherty has a good sense of the tropes and characters needed to populate the story, from the tough-but-fair police lieutenant to the poor little rich girl to the mysterious damsel with a secret (who, in this telling, is transgender, a fact the film treats with surprising respect, even if the characters do not). Dougherty also has a terrific ear for genre’s pulpy dialogue, from the hard-boiled explication of the hero’s moral code to any number of tossed-off bon mots, such as Lovecraft’s order at a swanky nightclub: “Bourbon. Show it some water, but be discreet.” Ward is perfectly cast, delivering this and other lines with exactly the right mix of cynical wit and world-weary sadness that marks him as the last honest man in L.A. The cast surrounding him is pretty solid, too: Moore is a sultry femme fatale not to be trusted, Brown is slick to the point of slimy, and there’s nowhere near enough David Warner with his malevolent dignity. All the elements are in place.

    The two genres sit comfortably side-by-side for a while, with Lovecraft defiantly bypassing the easy path of magic, recognizing its corrupting influence. But the film can’t resist itself, and in the final showdown, it’s the monster movie that wins out, culminating in a special effects extravaganza (as much as its premium-cable budget can afford) that has little to do with its time or place. The ending is big, loud, and unworthy of its well-crafted setup, leaving behind unfinished plotlines and unrealized potential. It’s telling that we see monsters, zombies, and gargoyles simply fade away at the finale, as though the film couldn’t think of what else to do with them.

    The cleverness of the basic idea doesn’t translate to any further breakthroughs; if you’ve seen a Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe tale, or even if you’ve seen newer takes like Chinatown or L.A. Confidential, then you’ve not only seen the style but a lot of the plot elements. And that’s okay; it’s a genre worth revisiting every now and then. The biggest problem for Cast a Deadly Spell is that the highwire mashup trick it’s attempting has been done much better. For example, Who Framed Roger Rabbit brilliantly joins the seemingly incompatible elements of noir and screwball animation in a way where each actually relies upon the other. By contrast, Spell is more of a patchwork than a true melange, taking bits from both styles but never really getting them to gel.

    Dougherty penned a sequel, Witch Hunt, set at the height of the Red Scare. Starring Dennis Hopper as Lovecraft and directed by Paul Schrader (!), the latter film is by all accounts a dud. So stick with Cast a Deadly Spell, an enjoyable watch that hits its noir marks with just enough horror seasoning to catch your eye. You can wish it did more with its juicy premise, but let’s be grateful for the small gift we have. All the rest… that’s the stuff that dreams are made of. 

    WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

    “Cast a Deadly Spell is a pleasingly bizarre mix of 50’s noir with elements of arcane horror with surprisingly high production values… a weird curio that definitely would never get made today…” – Garry Gallon, All The Ones That Got Away

    (This movie was nominated for review by Adam, who said it was “So goddamn weird that I was angry at myself for never having seen it and angrier at the cult following it never got.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)