A young man’s presence is repeatedly requested at the arranged time.
Tag Archives: Dreamlike
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: LOWLIFE (2012)
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DIRECTED BY: Seth A. Smith
FEATURING: Chik White, Kate Hartigan, Mitchell Wiebe, voice of John Urich
PLOT: Asa reappears after six months to join his friend Elle before a bad trip triggers a journey to a remote island littered with drug-secreting starfish.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Though hewing toward gritty realism, the plot hook—starfish drug—as well as the recurring hallucinations—narrated by a mystical dog—combine to create a singular something which is as strange as it is unsettling.
COMMENTS: Addiction has rarely looked this icky. A typical drug movie usually takes some effort to showcase the fun part: gathering with friends, experiencing euphoria, and the overall feeling of jolliness before the tragic results of substance abuse rear their heads. Lowlife diminishes these easy-times considerably through the drug in question: the brownish secretions of rather unhealthy looking starfish. While the characters do appear to appreciate the ensuing, loopy high, Seth Smith obliges the audience to endure a smearful dampness; and then, of course, hits his characters with the nasty ramifications.
The movie’s time-flow is somewhat uncertain, with three different narrative chains interlocking. The segments in color feature Asa, increasingly disheveled, as he roots through the murk of shallow streams in search of something. Black and white footage is used for the sequences involving Asa, Elle, and eventually the foppishly mysterious drug dealer Damon. Asa and Elle have a reunion—a reluctant one, as far as Elle’s concerned—which begins icily, but improves to the point that Asa reveals and shares what’s in his cooler. When these entities die from exposure (Asa is convinced Elle left the cooler lid off on purpose; Elle insists otherwise), the drug movie tragedy kicks off, catalyzed by a visit to Damon, who really creeps out Elle—her fear of telephoning him is palpable—but who also has two well-cared-for starfish to share.
The third block of narrative is the most cryptic. Black and white, and projected, it seems, 8mm-style, with a thick narration provided with its own subtitles, despite being in English. Nature, breezes, and words of fate, doom, and redemption. These are from the perspective of a dog, or perhaps dog spirit. (Smith is not hung-up on the viewer knowing what’s happening at the moment, so long as they feel what’s happening.) The dog-visions culminate alongside Asa’s arrival at his nadir, when Lowlife tilts briefly but fantastically to existentially unsettling body horror.
And so, the viewer is doomed with Asa; and Smith quietly shocks and awes in his feature debut. He would continue his evil-organism-tinged angst some years later with his sophomore effort, Tin Can. (This time with ill-omened fungus.) Lowlife is an unpleasant experience, but a worthwhile one—and a worthy member of the drug tragedy canon.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN BUY (1947)
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DIRECTED BY: Hans Richter
FEATURING: Jack Bittner
PLOT: Once Joe develops the power to observe his inner self and secures a lease for an office—not in that order, mind—he enters the dream-selling business.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: With the era’s avant-garde luminaries assembled here, you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting all of them as they worked on the set. One room, a mountain of oddball talent, and dreams, dreams, dreams.
COMMENTS: The title, the talent, not to mention the where…: Dreams That Money Can Buy is one of the most American movies out there. It’s behind its time—it’s ahead of its time; it bounces gaily, and turns on a dime. Calder and Cage, and Duchamp, and Man Ray: devising the dreams for the money you’ll pay. Three years, seven dreams, one Manhattan loft—and anchored by Joe, with his Cagney-esque coif.
Of all the random titles I’ve stumbled across, Richter’s Dreams That Money Can Buy stands out like flower-child noir; like a Seussian corporate video; like… perhaps nothing I’ve seen before. The opening credits clued me in to the fact that this motion picture (from 1947? sure, sure) was going to be more than a little out there. It was a pleasant surprise—again, from the start—to find it such a jolly jaunt through the deep subconscious up into the luminescently tactile, with the occasional staccato of life in the ’40s.
Meet Joe: “Look at yourself: a real mess, you’re all mixed up; snap out of it! Get yourself fixed up. Even if poets misbehave, they always remember to shave. Say, what’s the matter, Joe? Something gone wrong? Is your head on wrong? No! It’s terrific! Here’s something on which you can really pride yourself: you’ve discovered you can look inside yourself. You know what that means? You’re promoted! You’re no longer a bum—you’re an artist!” And a businessman. He sells dreams of desire, techno-futurism, and identity. We meet a pamphleteer offering membership to the Society for the Abolition of Abolition, or Daughters of American Grandfathers. On-screen audiences mimic on-screen-on-screen performances. A full-wire tabletop circus delights and astounds. Glittering mobiles tickle light across the camera lens. Our hero disappears, briefly, after receiving a wallop from a thug demanding a lead on the races. But while you may have recovered, Joe, beware the poker-chip’s probing eye…
Dreams That Money Can Buy is jam-packed with surrealism and lightheartedness: always sprightly, but never saccharine. The sights and sounds evoke the dreamy past, and the hazy future. (The closing track, composed for this mid-’40s feature, sounds like an obscure B-side from the late ’60s.) More fun-house than art-house, Richter and his team gaily crash the dour columns of haute couture and build a wonder-world from the freshly minted tumble of rubble.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
CAPSULE: DREAM TEAM (2024)
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Dream Team is currently available for VOD rental or purchase.
DIRECTED BY: Whitney Horn, Lev Kalman
FEATURING: Alex Zhang Hungtai, Esther Garrel, Fariha Róisín, Isabelle Barbier, Minh T Mia
PLOT: Interpol agents Chase National and No St. Aubergine are on the case, investigating a murderous coral conspiracy.
COMMENTS: Whoever edited Dream Team deserves a prize. It’s slippery, smooth, relaxing—and looks gooood. Quick research tells me that none other than Horn and Kalman (also the directors, producers, cinematographers, &c.) were responsible. So there’s that. There’s also the rest of the Dream Team phenomenon, which I’m having difficulty putting into words. Please allow me a quick break for a word from our sponsors…
… which is in keeping with the structure (?) punctuating the film. Dream Team is broken into seven episodes, beginning with “Asses to Ashes” and wrapping up with an incongruous finale on the seventh episode, “Ashes to Asses.” The episodes’ cheeky titles (others include “Doppelgängbang” and “the Biggest Organ”) are the first of two clear statements of intent: Horn and Kalman are laughing with us at themselves—or presumably that’s the hope. The second clear statement of intent, illuminated only halfway through and then after the fact, is they’re both really interested in coral. Upwards of a fifth of the movie is dedicated to what is effectively a lecture on that super-organism, delivered by alt-kinky Doctor Beef, often in a mesh top or bathing suit. Horn and Kalman also explore other pet interests, including a paired gymnastics routine by Interpol tech girls K and Venice, not to forget a dive into the philosophical nature of philosophy and experimentation, and ending on an oenophilic note with a wine tasting for a “coed/co-op” basketball team.
As scribbled by Dr. Peniris, truth is required for beauty, so permit me to strive for that beauty within this humble review: I got rather distracted around two-thirds through, and do believe I lost the thread of the narrative. For this I apologize, but wish to place some of the blame on the movie itself. I survived, wholly focused, both Damnation and Nostalghia, so I feel this dereliction of duty wasn’t for lack of practice. But Horn and Kalman have made a very dreamy movie, nostalgic for a period that never quite existed in the manner presented. And this is fine: there’s nothing wrong with a post-post-modern reinvention via dream-cycle of a post-modern, mid-ironic pastel-fused quarter-century-ago remembrance—except for how many hyphens are required to describe it.
Dream Team is currently in limited release in New York and Los Angeles and will presumably show up on VOD in the near future. We’ll let you know.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: