As part of the promotion for Dream Scenario, director Kristoffer Borgli agreed to be interviewed while in a lucid dreaming state; unfortunately, the conversation is interrupted by a knife salesman.
CONTENT WARNING: Mild profanity and adult situations
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Poor Things has been promoted onto the Apocryphally Weird movie list. Please read the official entry.
DIRECTED BY: Giorgos Lanthimos
FEATURING: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, 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.
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:
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Molkipolki can be watched for free courtesy of the author.
DIRECTED BY: Kyril Zach
FEATURING: Kyril Zach
PLOT: A man guides a series of unseen buyers through a house, with little luck.
COMMENTS: Kyril Zach does a number of things well in this odd little exercise, but his greatest coup is perhaps choosing such a versatile nonsense phrase. “Molkipolki” (featured prominently in Molkipolki) can, it seems, convey amusement, exposition, sadness, regret, flirtation, and frustration. The first actual words I recognized in this film came from the soundtrack, during the brief “Man I’m Horny” interlude. (This turns out to be a high point, as later we learn through a background song that “I Vomit When You Cook”, suggesting a deterioration in the relationship.) Emotions rise and fall throughout this… this…
This film takes place entirely in one home, which may be described as “Early-to-Late-20th-Century-Bourgeoisie-Fusion.” (Considering this residence is the property of either the director or a family member, I’ll abstain from further remarks on the matter.) Meet protagonist, selling this home. Or trying to. The opening act ends on a discouraging note, setting it up well for the eventual seduction—or something—in the second, which in turn primes the viewer for quiet melodrama in the third act. All this is done with one man, one house, one camera, and one word.
This man, Kyril Zach, is always interesting to watch. His gestures are articulated without being overblown, and camera positions suggest at least modest experience with the art of placing a recording box and pointing it. All the action is absurd, but with some “merely odd” touches dripped about to heighten the experience. (Nearly everything is mimed, but it tickled me to see the protagonist pretending empty-handedly to have a beverage while positioned right in front of a shelf filled with a variety of drinking vessels.) The setting, chosen I suspect because of access, is a chaotic mélange of tchotchkes and doo-dads curated over decades.
So for 45 minutes we hear “molkipolki” while watching this man miming amongst a mishmash—though the camera is tastefully diverted elsewhere when our hero gets lucky (if you take my meaning), showing instead a series of shots of decorative plates, wall vases, and a few taxidermy specimens. Points, certainly, for dedication: the only non-“molkipolki” uttered from his lips was an obliging “mmmmm!” shortly before the cooking-related stomach upset. The musical score (which can also be downloaded for free) veers between tin-plate angelic choir and gut-rumble novelty bluegrass, sometimes both together, creating a musical soundscape reminiscent of The Residents on their best behavior. And while the static camera work is largely functional, the sexy-time wall-shot sequence smacked so much of a Greenaway interlude, I can’t help but wonder…
This film came to us out of the blue from a singular-minded individual with something to say: “molkipolki.” And damned if he doesn’t say it, to considerable dramatic and comedic effect.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
This odd series of Thai commercials posits that if you want to know if someone is lying, you should look them in the eyes.
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DIRECTED BY: Steve Oedekerk
FEATURING: Steve Oedekerk, Jennifer Tung, Leo Lee
PLOT: The Chosen One, raised by rodents to become a talented martial artist, seeks revenge against the assassin who murdered his family when he was an infant.
COMMENTS: TV Tropes calls it a Gag Dub: take an existing film and record new dialogue to completely change the meaning of the film, ideally with amusing results. Comedy troupes from The Firesign Theater to the L.A. Connection have mined old movies for laughs, while more recently Bad Lip Reading and Brad Neely’s “Wizard People, Dear Reader” have conjured up demented versions of pop culture favorites. The Citizen Kane of such projects is certainly Woody Allen’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, in which new dialogue turned a Japanese spy thriller into the hunt for the world’s best egg salad recipe.
Steve Oedekerk—the storytelling mastermind behind such box office smashes as the Ace Ventura movies, Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor films, and Patch Adams—decided that he had something to contribute to this proud tradition, grafting a new script onto the 1976 Jimmy Wang Yu Chinese martial arts flick Hu He Shuang Xing (Tiger & Crane Fists). Oedekerk adds a 21st century twist, however, inserting himself into the film through a combination of judicious editing, digital replacement, blue-screen insertion, and new footage featuring replicated sets and spot-on doubles for the original cast. That idea is the funniest thing about Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, and Oedekerk throws himself into the effort with gusto, gamely acting like a complete fool and enduring the indignities of both repeated punches and gushes of fluids in the pursuit of laughs. Beyond the initial concept, though, there aren’t many to be found.
The film certainly tries. Most of the characters have silly names, and groups of marching soldiers or fighters-in-training conduct inane conversations. Oedekerk does nearly all the voices, usually with an exaggerated accent as the entire joke: the narrator speaks with a Chicano vocal fry, a street vendor screams like Dick Vitale, henchmen range from Southern hick to Paul Lynde, and the leading lady sounds like a bad impression of Miss Piggy and ends nearly every sentence with an off-putting “wee-oo-wee” noise. Meanwhile, random Easter eggs are thrown in for good measure, from a whale to a CGI alien to the RMS Titanic. It’s the kind of humor you would call “sophomoric,” only because there’s no word for freshman-level comedy. Or lower.
Every now and then, Oedekerk hits on an amusing idea, like a boombox-toting henchman whose tastes run from late-90s hip-hop to the glurgy ballad “The Morning After,” or a pair of speaking characters who never open their mouths but sing about their jobs as ventriloquists. But more often, Kung Pow is not content to let the joke speak for itself. For example, we could probably surmise that Oedekerk is going to fashion a set of nunchucks out of a pair of gophers, but the dialogue gives us a full play-by-play, refusing to leave it to chance that we’ll get it. Similarly amusing is a run of characters who have a touching dying moment only to be revealed as not quite dead—but once the joke is told, the scenes go on, stretching to fill time.
Redubbed wuxia gets the audience in the seats, but Oedekerk doesn’t really have a plan after that. Rather than subverting the usual themes of the genre, Kung Pow adopts them with a plot centered around revenge for wrongs done long ago. The characters become clownish, but their stunts and expressions keep their original context. So after a while, Oedekerk has to invent other things to happen, culminating in a lengthy milk-drenched battle with a CGI cow that includes two separate parodies of The Matrix.
A central problem is Oedekerk himself. A fairly bland actor on his face (he looks like a blend of Ben Stiller and Scott Bakula), he becomes something else as the Caucasian hero in a film whose Chinese cast is turned into buffoons. He has no independent personality or history with an audience, so by literally replacing the hero with himself, he unwittingly strolls into a minefield of cultural appropriation. Kung Pow may not be actively offensive, but it definitely has issues to deal with.
Kung Pow is actually a technical marvel, with roughly half of the movie consisting of new scenes slotted into the original film seamlessly. But those skills are being applied to 3rd-grade-level jokes, which makes you wonder if you wouldn’t be better off just watching Tiger & Crane Fists. Part of the appeal of the Gag Dub is that the biggest part of the job—making the actual movie—has already been done. Kung Pow demonstrates that you still have to do the hard work of comedy in order for your new thing to stand on its own.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Andrew. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
![Kung Pow! Enter the Fist [DVD]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51BWHBJ5FNL._SL500_.jpg)