Tag Archives: Black Comedy

Capsules

CAPSULE: CRUMB CATCHER (2023)

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Crumb Catcher is available for VOD purchase or rental.

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DIRECTED BY: Chris Skotchdopole

FEATURING: Rigo Garay, Ella Rae Peck, John Speredakos, Lorraine Farris

PLOT: Two newlyweds are tracked down by a gregarious waiter who has an unlikely business opportunity to pitch.

Still from Crumb Catcher (2023)

COMMENTS: Skotchdopole’s directorial debut features the movie prop I’d most like to own. That’s not only because it has a sleek design, precision-engineered components, and is a fetching shade of cadmium red; no, not just that. It’s also the absurd centerpiece of a fun little home invasion thriller—one in which the home in question doesn’t even belong to the victims, and for which the “invasion” is a troublingly enthusiastic sales pitch. Crumb Catcher, like the titular invention, is a strangely compelling endeavor, devised with unsettling earnestness.

Shane and Leah have just married, and it quickly becomes clear that their shaky union is grounded upon some rocky relations beforehand. Shane is a promising new author of a collection of short stories; Leah works for a publishing house, and was instrumental in signing him. Despite the post-wedding awkwardness and reception headaches, its pretty clear they want to make a go of things. But among Shane’s weaknesses, drinking looms large, and during a blackout drunk wedding night he makes a big mistake. Enter John, the waiter. An eager beaver if ever there were one: eager to chat, eager to please, and eager to bring his long-simmering dream to life.

It is best to get it out of the way that much of Crumb Catcher is by-the-numbers, but the piece is painted so well that it’s still quite the beaut. (Which is more than might be said for some of the art festooning the walls of the newlywed’s remote hideaway.) This has much to do with the performances. Ella Rae Peck and Rigo Garay have a fractured chemistry, as their characters are both trying to feel the other out, while also working through their own complications. John Speredakos, as John the waiter, always steals the show—and I am happy to let him do so. When his character contrives to crash the couple’s vacation, his earnestness is tinged by deranged menace (morphing later to deranged menace tinged by earnestness). Lorraine Farris, who plays Rose—John’s wife and sales partner—rides her own razor line between dominance and desperation.

Crumb Catcher also succeeds from the production standpoint. Skotchdopole’s team is purposeful, but playful, with its lighting and camerawork. The film’s major set-piece—John and Rose’s presentation of the exciting new restaurant dining experience—is disorienting, claustrophobic, and a bit gigglesome. Shane and Leah’s harrowing escape attempt (driving to Kingston, NY, of all places) perfectly captures the drunk driving experience. A parting shot of Rose bathed in the red rear light of the couple’s vintage sedan is a moment of dark beauty. Throughout the production flourishes all the characters oscillate around their set axes, making for a vibrant inter-character dynamic to match the vibrant on-screen look.

Yessir, ma’am, child: you can tell I’m very excited. And you, too, should be excited as well: Crumb Catcher is an wickedly wonderful entertainment opportunity.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“[T]he best – and most terrifying – thing about the movie is how true even the most absurdist parts of it are… Two outings of Funny Games didn’t teach us not to open the door to seemingly harmless looking strangers, but hey, maybe this beautifully shot and wonderfully weird pitch session from hell will?” — Olga Artemyeva, Screen Anarchy (contemporaneous)

List Candidates

FANTASIA 2024: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE TENANTS (2023)

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세입자

Seibja

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DIRECTED BY: Eunkyoung Yoon

FEATURING: Kim Dae-gun, Heo Dong-won, Park So-hyun

PLOT: A looming eviction forces Shin-dong to sub-lease his bathroom to a pair of eccentric newlyweds.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: The Tenants is à la Korea, with a home invasion scenario playing out as a paperwork nightmare.

COMMENTS: Shin-dong is not very popular. He has a work acquaintance, who only chats with him because they’re desk neighbors. Outside the office, he talks with just two people. His landlord, labeled “Mr. Bastard” on his phone address book, is a too-cheery little kid eager for a better clientele. And his friend, labeled “Mr. Dork,” is as antisocial as Shin-dong. Our protagonist is trapped: cramped apartment, cramped job, all playing out on a cramped screen and with a claustrophobic sound design. So it is with more trepidation than relief that we meet a tall man with a double-feathered chapeau, and his short trad-clad wife, who are interested in renting out Shin-dong’s bathroom. Because the government’s “Wolwolse” program ties the hands of landlords, this sublease arrangement will help Shin-dong, while also helping these newlyweds with the space they need—as well as a sly opportunity they take advantage of after some months of tenancy.

The Tenants occupies a dreary space that makes Terry Gilliam‘s  Brazilian vibrancy appear sensible. Shin-dong’s day (and increasingly, night) job as a low-level office functionary is the epitome of a corporate grind. The wealthy CEO’s inspirational messages drive the point home: it is not passion, innovation, or ambition by which his artificial meat company succeeds, oh no, but work, work, work. And that’s just about all Shin-dong has time for, especially when the prospect of a company transfer to “Sphere 2” is on the cards: the newest, cleanest, bestest place. But his tiny dream grows increasingly precarious the longer his tenants tenant.

This pair: the tall, crisply suited, always gloved, and invariably be-hatted husband is a man out of place, and not just because his well-blocked fedora sports matching bird plumes on either side, giving him an antenna’d appearance. He crowds the frame’s vertical space, and is capable of strength. His reassuring use of the term “bro” whenever speaking with with Shin-dong is creepy from the start, and he has a tendency to speak with two meanings. A misunderstanding between he and Shin-dong—regarding the wife’s mysterious appearance in Shin-dong’s bedroom—is both amusing and troubling. The wife is nearly non-verbal, but always happy to offer a deeply cut, eye-shutting smile.

But this peculiar husband and wife duo are not nearly so troubling as the layered and growing paperwork and procedure which threatens to consume our hero. As Mr. Dork observes, cities are dying, and pursuing ever more drastic means to procedurally chain their citizens. Though the Wolwolse program starts as a blessing, its complications become a curse. From the start, director Eunkyoung Yoon shovels sheaves of postmodern evil on Shin-dong through her dark and darkly comic means; and when he learns why his Wolwolse tenants were so keen on the bathroom, their disclosure about a sub-tenant of their own might be just enough to break him.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“An unusually confident first film, stylishly shot in black and white, The Tenants may explore some familiar ideas but it is very much its own thing. Tight camerawork informed by a keen sense of the absurd gives it a lot of personality, and its bleakness is leavened by humour.”–Jennie Kermode, Eye For Film (festival screening)

Channel 366

CHANNEL 366: THE KINGDOM TRILOGY (THE KINGDOM, THE KINGDOM II, THE KINGDOM: EXODUS)

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Riget

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Still from "The Kingdom"

DIRECTED BY: /Morten Arnford (Kingdom, Kingdom II); Lars von Trier (Kingdom: Exodus)

FEATURING: Ernst-Hugo Järegård, Kirsten Rolffes, Søren Pilmark, Birgitte Raaberg, , Mikael Persbrandt, Lars Mikkelsen, Tuva Novotny, , , Lars von Trier

PLOT: This limited TV series follows goings-on, bureaucratic and supernatural, at Denmark’s largest hospital. As the prologue of each episode states:

“The Kingdom Hospital rests on ancient marshland—where the bleaching ponds once lay. Here, the bleachers moistened their great spans of cloth. The steam from the cloth shrouded the place in permanent fog. Then the hospital was built here. The bleachers gave way to doctors, researchers—the best brains in the nation and the most perfect technology.

To crown their work, they called their hospital ‘The Kingdom’. Now life was to be charted and ignorance and superstition never to shake science again. Perhaps their arrogance became too pronounced—like their persistent denial of the spiritual. For it is that the cold and damp have returned. Tiny signs of fatigue are appearing in the solid, modern edifice.

No living person knows it yet, but the portal to The Kingdom—is opening again.”

COMMENTS: It’s not out of line to call “The Kingdom” Lars von Trier’s ““; he’s stated that the David Lynch series is a direct influence.  But there’s much more to it. Both shows are anchored in the 90s, and both were resurrected some twenty-five years later to continue and conclude their stories. Both are, ultimately, about the ongoing battle between Good and Evil. “Twin Peaks” did so within the framework of the late 80s/early 90s nighttime network soap operas, grafted with Lynch’s retro-50s style, and adding surrealism, cosmic horror, and a pinch of meta commentary. “The Kingdom” frames that battle within the hospital/medical show, a staple of television drama. Many Americans will think of “E.R.”, although a more apt comparison would be “St. Elsewhere” with a little bit of “M*A*S*H” and an aesthetic heavily influenced by “Homicide: Life in the Streets.” It’s also firmly anchored in institutional satires like The Hospital (1971) and Britannia Hospital (1982). Stephen King1 is also a big influence. Von Trier uses popular tropes to deliver the horror bits: a ghost girl, haunted transports (ambulances in early seasons, a helicopter in “Exodus”), mass graveyards (or bleaching ground stand-ins), spirits on the premises. There’s also some play with severed body parts, and “Kingdom”‘s big set piece, the introduction of ‘Little Brother’ at the end of the first series.

The tropes of medical dramas are twisted here: the heroic doctor figure runs an underground black market; a doctor researching a specific form of liver cancer has an organ transplanted into him Continue reading CHANNEL 366: THE KINGDOM TRILOGY (THE KINGDOM, THE KINGDOM II, THE KINGDOM: EXODUS) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: JOBE’Z WORLD (2018)

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DIRECTED BY: Michael M. Bilandic

FEATURING: Jason Grisell,

PLOT: A rollerblading courier is given the task of delivering a bespoke drug to his favorite actor, and his tenuous grip on survival is violently wrenched when the thespian overdoses.

Still from Jobe'z World (2018)

COMMENTS: You’re clearly in a bad spot when staring down a three-barreled bazooka wielded by a PTSD-stricken drug user, particularly when he blames you for the death of his all-time favorite actor. But either through mellow disposition—or mind-numbing desperation—Jobe takes this turn of events in reluctant stride. His evenings all kind of suck anyway, having landed a career of sorts as a drug courier, rollerblading his way around downtown New York City, supplying various oddballs with their various fixes.

Jobe’z World unfolds with a grim breeziness, beginning with a foray in the further-flung cosmos as the protagonist regrets existing in the one tiny pocket of the universe where anyone cares. He’s a chill guy, or wishes he could be. And his journey through a momentous NYC night is lit with shadows, through a camera which overlays a plastic, off-colored palette. Writer-director Michael Bilandic creates a world slightly unmoored from time, and sets his protagonist on a gauntlet through minor terrors and once-removed personal tragedy.

The MacGuffin here is a fading actor in the tradition of Orson Welles, who would have been considered a relic thirty years prior. For drug users and washed-up celebrities, perhaps time becomes meaningless (the actor greets Jobe with the line, “What’s your name? You know, like that Depeche Mode Song”—managing to make a dated, obscure reference out of a dated, obvious one); and for Jobe, a drug dealer, time shrinks and stretches, always in the opposite direction he would like.

This is a small-gauge film, with small tragedies, small perils, and almost a hiccup of a conclusion. By the end of Jobe’s trial-by-night—New York style—his lingering earnestness is lathed away. While this might be viewed as unfortunate, it is, at least, easier. Around halfway through we learn that Jobe peaked some twenty years prior, having burnt his chances at professional rollerblading. Like the actor he’s blamed for killing, he is better off fading into the hazy background alongside the motley burnouts to whom he delivers drugs.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Writer-director Bilandic fails to infuse the painfully thin proceedings with any narrative momentum or comic flair, resulting in an oppressive weirdness for weirdness’ sake.”–Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter (contemporaneous)

Jobe'z World [Blu-ray]

Jobe'z World [Blu-ray]
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List Candidates, Video Review

WEIRD VIEW CREW: ANDY WARHOL’S BAD (1977)

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A pitch-black, campy comedy about murder for hire in which the victims include babies and puppies, starring cult icons Carroll Baker and . Directed by one Jed Johnson (Warhol’s lover at the time). Before , there was . Pete thinks this one is deserving of Apocrypha status.

(This movie was nominated for review by Christian McLaughlin of Westgate Gallery, who called this “astonishingly ahead-of-its-time 1977 black comedy” his “#1 choice” for the list, but also warned “it’s almost impossible to see a decent & uncut print.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)