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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE WHEEL OF HEAVEN (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Joe Badon

FEATURING: Kali Russell, Jeff Pearson, Vincent Stalba

PLOT: Purity navigates a Choose Your Own Adventure-style novel as Joe Badon flips channels through his own narrative.

Still from The Wheel of Heaven (2023)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: The Wheel of Heaven unspools before the viewer as a direct conduit into the filmmaker’s mind (including his rapid-fire attention span). With Death, derricks, sex, and banana splits in the proceedings, Badon’s movie is as strange as it is hurried.

COMMENTS: Decades ago, in college, I received a professor’s feedback on a short-film screenplay I had submitted: “I don’t quite follow what’s going on, but it seems to be the screenplay you want to write.” This, perhaps, was the apex of my cinematic career. His (good natured) reaction came to mind recently concerning Joe Badon’s latest film, The Wheel of Heaven. First, because he includes an early scene wherein he explains his writing process; second, because, like my film teacher those many years ago, I did not quite follow what was going on, but strongly feel that this is the movie Badon wanted to make. It’s been argued (by me, at least) that art is best done for an audience of one; and it’s fortunate that Badon’s audience of one has such a scattered field of interests.

The Wheel of Heaven has a little something for everyone who is likely to find their way to this review (and indeed, this website). Do you enjoy silly humor, executed intelligently? Are you curious about the many elements of creative process behind filmmaking? Were you seeking a dessert-fueled monologue on the destruction inherent in creation? And, have you or any chill deuces in your ‘board crew been vexed by the man?

With the latter scenario, I recommend you telephone “Rad” Abrams, Skateboard Attorney. His information—as well as everything else I’ve been on about in the paragraph above—can be found in The Wheel of Heaven: a film as personal as it is unpretentious. The staccato pacing keeps an eyebrow raised and a smirk ever-forming as we travel between science fiction, philosophical thriller, news flashes, and ubiquitous ad parodies on Badon’s own BBDCCVTV station.

This acronym, like much of the film, is never explained. But the focus here is the process. That process? Creating—however you are able so to do. Badon has assembled a movie from cracked cathode-memories molded into a series of querical doorways. With only 100 minutes, he can only open and explore so many of them; but it isn’t life without choices. Perhaps, at the end of it all, we may be lucky enough to explore those prior paths unchosen. Until then, the only way to go is forward, even if it leads you back for a do-over.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Completing a cycle of meta-chaos and matryoshka doll storytelling, filmmaker and master of the cosmic weird Joe Badon has crafted his most awesome and best movie to date.”–Bill Arcenaux, Moviegoing with Bill

The Wheel of Heaven [DVD]

The Wheel of Heaven [DVD]
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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: KILL THE JOCKEY (2024)

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El jockey

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Kill the Jockey is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

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DIRECTED BY: Luis Ortega

FEATURING: Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Úrsula Corberó, Daniel Fanego

PLOT: Remo, a gifted and drug-addled jockey, finds himself on the run from the mob after paddock fence smash-up leaves him hospitalized.

Still from Kill the Jockey (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Even before his traumatic brain injury, Remo is not well in the head, and director Luis Ortega’s narrative reflects that haziness. Once our fractured jockey hits the streets in a borrowed lady’s fur coat (with elegant handbag), all bets are off as Kill the Jockey careens toward its mystical photo-finish.

COMMENTS: The horse is secured in the center of the transport plane, monitored by a serious-faced attendant in an uncertain uniform. The man peers out the window, and observes the craft is approaching the airstrip. The horse’s ears twitch, ever so slightly, as it stands stock-still, darting its eyes left and right. We can tell it is unsettled—highly unsettled—but unsure as to why. Regardless, it makes no sudden moves as it attempts to get a bead on just what is going on, and why it feels so very disturbed.

This beast’s experience traveling through the air resembles the viewer’s journey through Luis Ortega’s metaphysical sports drama, Kill the Jockey; though, unlike the horse, we are treated to regular shots of comedy and a delightful soundtrack. Remo, the titular jockey, drinks (whiskey and ketamine), dances, and seems to be in dangerous pursuit of comatose living. Remo’s boss, Fanego, claims he loves his jockeys like sons, which may well be true, but certainly loves having an infant in his arms as a prop (observed, by one of his goons, as having been apparently the same age for the past seven years). Remo’s lover, Abril, doesn’t seem to love him any more. She tells him so, and in response to how she might come to love him again: “Only if you die and are reborn.” Remo takes on the challenge.

With the second act, cued by a close-up of two radically different-sized pupils on Remo’s post-coma visage, what is and isn’t actually happening becomes increasingly unclear. It appears that Remo, against the odds, survived, and also that he’s in for a personality change of foundational proportions. But why does he no longer affect a measuring scale? (His gun, apparently, weighs one kilogram; that’s around one more kilogram than he registers.)  When did he learn to apply face make-up so capably? And just how did Fanego’s Hispanic-white-boy baby suddenly become a black one? (I didn’t quite believe his claim that “…just happens as they grow.”)

The one certainty afforded us is that our hero, and his story, has come unblinkered. Remo becomes Dolores, Dolores charms her prison mates (and the warden) before dawning a jockey uniform for some underground competition. Abril falls in love again, anticipating the birth of Remo’s daughter. Then a blast of violence catalyzes a metaphysical transference, leaving Abril and Remo—and us—with a happy ending that goes down as gaily as a ketamine and whiskey cocktail.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A colorful Argentine oddity…  Luis Ortega’s alternately dark and daffy eighth feature is suitably untethered for a story concerned with the malleability of the self. That comes at some cost to its impact, however: Awash with kooky gags and bolstered by the strange, soulful presence of leading man Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, it’s fun but flighty, liable to throw some viewers from the saddle.”–Guy Lodge, Variety (contemporaneous)

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CAPSULE: THE TOXIC AVENGER (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Macon Blair

FEATURING: , , , Jacob Tremblay,

PLOT: A mild-mannered janitor becomes an avenging superhero after being thrown into a vat of toxic waste.

Still from THE TOXIC AVENGER (2023)

COMMENTS: The idea of Hollywood types spiffing up an old script for a polished take on the underground exploitation studio’s punk sensibilities is inherently intriguing. And although some might miss the Jersey grime and DIY nihilism, there’s enough of a novelty factor to the whole enterprise to make the new Toxic Avenger worth a look.

Right away, you can tell that little things like editing, lighting, and cinematography far surpass ‘s capabilities. Not to mention, of course, the acting. (If you can even name an actor from another Toxic Avenger movie, you’re a real fan.) Who wouldn’t be curious to see Peter Dinklage, Kevin Bacon, and Elijah Wood ham it up in Tromaville? Even the supporting characters with less name recognition, Taylour Paige and Jacob Tremblay, blow away most Troma performers, who tend to be broad comic caricatures who come across more through costuming and outrageousness than through line deliveries. The stars don’t sleepwalk through the project, either. Dinklage gives it his all, putting real pathos into Winston Gooze, snuffling in terror and even donning a pink tutu at one point. Bacon has as much of a ball as you would expect as a soulless and unscrupulous corporate huckster with his own mad science dungeon in the basement of his mansion. Wood is nearly unrecognizable as a pasty-faced, Penguin-like chief of security with a bizarre hairdo (he’s balding, but with one exceptionally long wisp of hair growing from the front of his crown).

The major tonal change is that this new Avenger sports conspicuously more heart than Troma’s cynical output. The script goes out of its way to show us that Winston is a decent man, whose only flaw is that he’s overly meek. A widower, Winston takes his responsibility as sole provider for surly teen stepson Wade seriously. Maybe he lacks the courage to stand up to a slumlord who’s harassing his grandmotherly neighbor, but he will instinctively risk his life to save her cat from an oncoming car. When he’s diagnosed with an unspecified fatal illness from mopping up toxic waste all day to feed his family, and then denied lifesaving care by healthcare bureaucrats, he generates legitimate sympathy. And the Avenger’s ultimate targets—corporate scallywags poisoning the populace, not just teen bullies as in the original—make for a noble cause. Paige’s J.J. is an activist, a legitimate self-sacrificing idealist in the usually everyone-for-themself Tromaville. Whether these changes represent a welcome humanizing touch, or a sellout of Troma’s laugh-while-burning-society-to-the-ground ethos, is a matter of personal taste. I think it generally works.

What the remake keeps from Troma is the reliance on comic violence and gore, which is in fact amped up to even higher decibels. Yep, arms get yanked off and heads split open aplenty, and the finale sprays megagallons of blood. The makeup also hearkens back to Troma’s glory days; the Avenger has an inarticulate rubber mask, and the chief baddies (a “horrorcore” band called the Killer Nutz) feature characters like a giant chicken with a mohawk. The comedy, however, misses even more than a Troma production. I didn’t hear a single hearty laugh ringing out at a lightly-attended screening, only occasional muffled chuckles. The humor is not transgressive or politically incorrect in the slightest; targets are kept safe (who could be offended by making fun of health insurers or narcissistic CEOs?) The mostly PG-13 jokes are similar to, but not quite as funny as, those in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. It would have been nice to see the script go a little harder; one of Troma’s few virtues is their willingness to be equal opportunity offenders.

In the end, the new Toxie is neither the disaster nor the success it might have been. At a minimum, it fulfills what the project promised: a look at what the 80s superhero spoof might have looked like with a reasonable budget. It corrects some of the original’s shortcomings, but abandons some of the outsider charm in the process. Next up: a big budget remake of Pink Flamingos with RuPaul as Divine, Pedro Pascal and as the Marbles, and Lizzo as the Egg Lady.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a weird, messy, heartfelt little beast that finds a surprising amount of soul beneath its buckets of blood…  Against all odds, The Toxic Avenger has grown up, just a little, without losing the sense of gonzo fun that made him a cult legend.”–Nicolas Delgadillo, Knotfest (contemporaneous)

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CAPSULE: MAGNETOSPHERE (2024)

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DIRECTED BY: Nicola Rose

FEATURING: Shayelin Martin, Patrick McKenna, Colin Mochrie, Mikayla Kong, Steven He, Tania Webb

PLOT: A 13-year old girl with synesthesia deals with a new school, first crushes, bullying, and other typical teen problems.

Still from Magnetosphere (2024)

COMMENTS: Synesthesia, the neurological condition commonly described as “seeing sounds” or “hearing colors,” provides a tempting, if underutilized, possibility for filmmakers. A director can use “draw on the lens” techniques, easily achieved on the cheap through commercial software, to depict a protagonist’s subjective experience of seeing rainbows and candy-colored floaters overlaid on reality, providing an easy excuse to add phantasmagoric visual flair to any story. Typically, an in-film illicit drug trip would provide the pretext for such effects. By addressing synesthesia, director Nicola Rose can create a childlike world of sparkly kiddie psychedelia—fluffy unicorn and cotton candy stuff, but with a tie-dye aesthetic—while staying safely within the confines of a Disney/Nickelodeon storyline.

Protagonist Maggie almost constantly, if inconsistently, hallucinates. Sure, there are the green and purple and yellow sparkles that fill the screen when she sings a ballad on her portable keyboard, and the fact that, when she concentrates, she sees all the other characters with individual colored auras: pink for her sister, brilliant green for her crush, a squiggly mess of multicolored threads for her conflicted bestie. That’s textbook synesthesia. But Maggie can also draw lines and shapes in the air, persistent tracers that form hearts and crowns and words that glow with neon colors. An art lesson is so visually intense for her that the screen glitches into an incoherent muddle as dissonant music plays, causing her to puke. Her Barbie doll, Cassiopeia, talks to her, frankly confessing that she represents Maggie’s insecurities (while denying that she’s part of her host’s “weird brain thing.”). This expansive magical realism, transcending the bounds of simply “hearing colors,” is poetic license that expresses Maggie’s inner sense of alienness. But it also makes the girl seem like she suffers more from Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder than synesthesia. Perhaps her parents slipped LSD into her bottle back in their hippie days?

While the tastefully trippy visuals are novel in this context, the plot is formula, occasionally approaching pure corn. Insecure teen girl has some ultimately minor affliction that makes her self-conscious, experiences normal teen girl problems, gains confidence and the tools to resolve life’s little disappointments with maturity, the future looks bright. There’s bullying, an inappropriate crush, and an LGBTQ subplot to deal with, and it all gets resolved as neatly as you’d expect. To pass the time while the pattern plays out, we have not only the hallucinatory bursts, but a lot of comedy. Maggie’s dad is a goofball thespian directing a community theater production of “Pirates of Penzance” (which also has a predictable arc, with the scrappy citizen-singers overcoming obstacles with help from an unlikely source). The primary comic relief comes from “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” veteran Colin Mochrie, who plays weirdo handyman Gil, a guy who comes off like a kid-friendly version of Creed Bratton from “The Office.” He has a mysterious private existence somewhere outside of polite society and is given to inappropriate, absurd non sequiturs (“I saw action in ‘Nam so that boneheaded, ungrateful numbnuts like you could have a kitchen toilet!”) Gil also hunts rats with a chainsaw. I didn’t find his silly, unmotivated antics particularly amusing, but humor is subjective, and the jokes are for a much younger crowd.

We provide allowances for the script’s formularity, since the film is prosocially pedantic and aimed at a pre-teen to young teen audience. Still, the high ratings on this low-budget film are astounding: an 8.4 on IMDb (the original Toy Story has an 8.3), 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (Lady Bird has a 99% rating). Admittedly, that’s on inappreciable numbers (a mere 88 IMDb voters and 12 RT critics), but even accounting for the small sample size, these scores are a bit baffling. The movie is perfectly fine. The acting is competent, the effects cheap but effective, the message heartwarming, the comedy… probably works for some. But it seems that Magnetosphere is largely lauded for its good intentions rather than its actual quality. It’s a nice movie. There is a large element of self-selection here: with a very limited release, only people already well-disposed to this material are likely to queue it up. There aren’t enough teenage synesthetics to form a cult audience, and even those kids will be drawn more to the same mainstream Marvel/Hunger Games fare their peers devour—it’s mostly their parents who will be cheering Magnetosphere. For curiosity seekers like us, this is a decent, modest movie that won’t feel like a waste of time, but it’s not some hidden classic that justifies those gaudy metrics. A reminder to always be skeptical of high internet ratings on low-distribution niche items.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Magnetosphere is for the weirdo in all of us who believes in the beauty the world has to offer.”–Tina Kakadelis, Beyond the Cinerama Dome (contemporaneous)

Magnetosphere [DVD]

Magnetosphere [DVD]
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