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CAPSULE: ALTERED PERCEPTIONS (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Jorge Ameer

FEATURING: Oran Stainbrook, Matt Fling, Danny Fehsenfeld, Vincent Giovanni, ,

PLOT: Pandemic, violence, and sedition threaten to destroy the United States; a father and son embedded in opposing political organizations are its last hope.

COMMENTS: Like most movies, Altered Perceptions ends with the standard notice, “This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.” I’m going to go ahead and ignore that. With characters like slimy Senator Ted DeMarcos, bigoted Governor Ron San Diego, and an obvious George Santos look-alike as a spineless henchman (sportingly portrayed by director Jorge Ameer himself), it is clear just which politico goons the filmmaker is referencing. Indeed, the protagonist’s name—Alex Feretti, son of Dr. Feretti, a Whitehouse disease big-wig—echoes a certain Dr. A. Fauci of pandemic fame.

And what a pandemic! Sure, Covid was bad enough, but it seems that the vaccines and boosters for it trigger a nasty mental deterioration coupled with homi- and suicidal violence in many who received it, especially blacks and HOMOsexuals (emphasis mimicking DeMarcos’ singular pronunciation). This leads to chaos in the country, which a gallery of secessionist goons take advantage of, ultimately requesting that all Blacks and HOMOsexuals who have received the vaccine voluntarily check in to observation facilities in America’s South and Southwest. And oh yes, it affects the elderly, too (cue not-at-all-President-Biden being called on to step down); and what with the pre-eminent disease guy (aforementioned Doctor F̶a̶u̶c̶i̶ Feretti) being a prominent homosexual, it’s all looking very bad for various put-upon groups.

The paragraph above is ill-wrought, so as to better give you an idea of the narrative flow of Altered Perceptions—and I haven’t yet even touched upon the fully-frontally nude time traveler who is desperate to enlist the help of Alex Feretti, who is not only the son of the nationally known doctor but also the top aide to Senator DeMarcos. These shotgun blasts of social commentary, interspersed with interludes of well-intentioned guesses at what a gay relationship is like, crackle over the course of two hours as we watch society collapse from both macro- and micro-focus. And before I forget, there’s a strange plot from North Korea brewing as well.

Jorge Ameer kept my interest throughout, it is true. But much of that stemmed from the constant crinkling sound I heard as the plot unfurled. The screenwriter is a neuropsychologist, and while axes are ground, its never clear what they ultimately end up swung at. Ameer is obviously earnest, but his technical (and storytelling) proficiency is only a few notches above Tommy Wiseau’s. The acting ranges from C- to B+, with son Feretti scoring the former and father Feretti the latter, rendering their interactions one-sidedly stilted. And while I don’t hold clunky special effects against anyone, others do—and are so warned.

Still, I much prefer a film’s reach to exceed its grasp than vice versa, and while I could reel off any number of further quibbles, I’d feel petty doing so. Ameer takes a stab at making a Big Movie with Big Ideas under the restraints of a low budget. If you will allow the use of a crummy double-metaphor, Altered Perceptions is like a slice of Swiss cheese: there are plenty of holes; but also like a slice of Swiss cheese, it holds together just enough to make it a notable addition in the greater Sandwich of Cinema.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… this is a glitchy, channel-surfing trawl through recent American history, where the dialogue is stylised and repetitive, the characters dumbed down, and the narrative unbelievable to the point of surrealism. Yet this is part of the point: for here, as in a Neil Breen film, artifice is foregrounded, the medium is the message, and ultimately it is the viewer’s perceptions which are altered, as Ameer – who also plays one of DeMarcos’ aides – infects us all with the maddening irrationality of America’s contemporary culture wars.”–Anton Bitel, Projected Figures (contemporaneous)

Altered Perceptions [Blu-ray]

Altered Perceptions [Blu-ray]
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FANTASIA 2023: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: HIPPO (2023)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Kimball Farley, Lilla Kizlinger, Eliza Roberts, voice of

PLOT: A nineteen-year-old boy lives a sheltered life of sugar and videogames under the guardianship of his conspiracy-obsessed mother and in the company of his adopted seventeen-year-old Hungarian sister who is obsessed with conceiving a child.

Still from Hippo (2023)

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: This is a very dark, but laugh-out-loud comedy centered on a family whose dysfunction makes the viewer sympathize with a visiting sex offender. Outrageous, unsettling, and hilarious.

COMMENTS: On those rare occasions when one is smacked upside the head with such beautiful domestic horror, it pays to linger on the experience: savoring the deadpan unpleasantness that oozes a quirky charm reminiscent of Eraserhead as directed by ; contemplating the beauty of life as it emerges from horrid, gooey ingredients; and laughing your ass off at the mad, matter-of-fact insanity of a calmly self-assured beta-male psycho. Hippo feels tailor made for those happy few who can overlook sacrilege, sexual mores, and can find it in their heart to embrace a nightmare version of Thomas Kinkade.

Like his adopted Hungarian sister, Buttercup, Adam is schooled at home by a mother who has witnessed UFOs. The lad, recently turned nineteen, is called “Hippo” by his sister and mother, a pet name derived from a stuffed animal in his possession for years, and which he recently has begun humping nightly before sleep. (He does not know about “masturbation”, per se, and similarly his stepsister is wholly unaware of the facts about sex and sexuality.) As the trio go about their routines, dynamics shift as Hippo becomes more paranoid about the dangers outside the home—alien invasion and World War III among them—and Buttercup, in her own semi-detached view of this insular world, desires more and more to bear a child, preferably her stepbrother’s. A visitation by an out-of-town pervert (for a “play-date”, the drunken mother assures the group at an awkward dinner) catalyses the collapse of the old family unit, bringing Hippo and Buttercup into a strange new world.

Hippo is horror, in its way. Its depiction of a ’90s-era man-child, obsessed as much with violence as his own merits as an individual, induces both dismay and guffaws. Kimball Farley is nothing short of frightening in his depiction of Hippo, challenging viewers with his impressively crummy portrayals of masculinity through remarks like, “Quiet. You are about to witness man made horrors beyond your comprehension”, and meaning every word. I could also write that as, Kimball Farley is nothing short of hilarious in his depiction of Hippo. Such is the line being tread here, with Hippo’s aspiring-alpha-male deadpan complemented perfectly by his stepsister’s resigned deadpan (and each side glued by the unflappability of Eliza Roberts’ mother hen).

The black and white cinematography is artistic and ridiculous, in keeping with the thematic and stylistic dualities found throughout. As an exploration of extreme religion clashing with extreme modernity (vintage, in this case, as Hippo relishes a particular—and violent—new game on his N64), Rapaport shows a societal decay through a mercifully semi-detached lens. I laughed heartily, particularly at the finale’s Genesis punchline, and only felt comfortable so doing because I knew the crowd I was watching alongside. Hippo is not for the easily offended: a bouncy-dark vision with the kind of happy ending that only a Henry Spencer could relish.

Listen to our interview with star and Director of Photography William Babcock.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an exceedingly strange, quirky film meant to provoke, like the incestuous subtext of The Royal Tenenbaums restaged by way of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth…  a fantastically weird investigation into young manhood, one that feels like it comments on the modern ‘incel’ as much as it does on sheltered 90s kids.”–Eric Langberg, “Everything’s Interesting”

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CAPSULE: THE COCA-COLA KID (1985)

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DIRECTED BY: Dušan Makavejev

FEATURING: Eric Roberts, Greta Scacchi, Bill Kerr, Chris Haywood, Rebecca Smart

PLOT: A Coca-Cola executive travels to Australia to find out why the signature product has failed to penetrate one remote outpost in the country; Along the way, he crosses swords with an unexpectedly fierce competitor, adapts to down-under culture shock, and tries to cope with his distractingly quirky secretary.

Still from The Coca-Cola Kid (1985)

COMMENTS: Eric Roberts was young once. I mean, so were we all, but the lies we tell ourselves about the aging process are revealed more starkly in the cinema. So here he is: young, blond, rosy-cheeked, oozing alright-alright charm and boasting a Georgia accent you can spread on toast. So even though his mononymous character Becker is an ex-Marine who is called upon to be the face of all-consuming American capitalism, exploiting local culture and obliterating competitiveness for the benefit of a rapacious corporation, the thought that kept coming back to me was, “My goodness, who knew Eric Roberts was pretty?”

The gorgeousness of Eric Roberts is undoubtedly a strategy. If Satan is, as some contend, actually a ravishing beauty who lures the weak and unsuspecting, then the Coca-Cola Company is clearly cast here in the role of Satan, parlaying their sweet acidity, bold red branding scheme, and co-option of Santa Claus into world dominance. So it’s tempting at the outset to expect an Outback-themed take on Local Hero, in which our protagonist is confronted by an idyllic way of life that is literally foreign to his make-a-buck existence.

But The Coca-Cola Kid really isn’t into Becker, or even Coke, as avatars of our consumer culture. Far from embodying the worst traits of the faceless money monster, Becker is confused and aimless. He goes through the motions of using the latest marketing techniques to bring down his competitors, but his heart really isn’t in it. He barely seems to be into anything: he doesn’t particularly enjoy his own product any further than its saleable qualities, his approach to the alien landscape in which he has landed is purely functional, and his proto-manic pixie secretary Terri only manages to irritate him until she finally lures him into bed. (Even Becker’s sexuality is uncommitted; he seems equally baffled by Terri’s entreaties and by a series of aggressive same-sex come-ons at a party.) Aside from Terri’s grammar-school-aged daughter, the only person Becker seems to understand at all is his opponent.

Cue Becker’s foe: T. George McDowell, the biggest fish in a very small pond and a man with an oversized sense of his ability to compete with an industry juggernaut. He has steadfastly resisted Coke’s incursion into the region in favor of his own line of sodas, and it emerges that the whole enterprise is borne out of an “if you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em” brand of revenge for the loss of his wife, a Mississippi-born Coke ad model whom he married and lost over his obsessions. (“She never understood the ice,” he reminisces.) Far from being a wide-eyed innocent from the sticks, McDowell fancies himself a global tycoon and Coke’s equal. It leads to an inevitable showdown between a man who thinks he has all the power and a man who knows he does.

The result is ultimately tragic. McDowell is utterly out of his league. There’s no competing with a behemoth, and the contrast is best dramatized in their marketing strategies. A trio of homely cheerleaders can’t hold a candle to pop of half-a-dozen Coke-bearing Santas, and McDowell’s homespun musical ditty is blown out of the room by the absolute banger of a jingle that Tim Finn has concocted.

But all the while, there’s this strange effort to graft a love story onto the film, and while everyone is slowly being crushed by capitalism’s iron boot, it’s in the romance where Dušan Makavejev seems to be trying the hardest to be Dušan Makavejev. The mix of rapacious capitalism and cheeky eroticism feels a little like he was trying to make a more audience-friendly version of his own Sweet Movie. (A genuinely well-crafted sex scene on a feather bed is a first cousin to the earlier film’s romp in sugar.) But he doesn’t seem any more focused than his characters. It’s a mark of how clueless Becker is that the stunningly sexy Greta Scacchi has to work so hard to get his attention, but it’s also curious how haphazard and clumsy Terri’s advances are. She holds a deep (and plotty) secret, but its revelation ultimately doesn’t have much impact on the choices characters must make. It’s just sort of there.

The Coca-Cola Kid has a very Australian soul, exuding a powerful “don’t worry, mate” vibe. Perhaps that’s the weirdest thing about it: in the face of themes like conquering capitalism, cultural homogeneity, and the overwhelming nature of love, the approach it settles on is, “Relax and go with it.” Maybe it’s a sensible approach, but it robs the film of immediacy and power. It just doesn’t feel like the real thing.

Fun City Editions released The Coca-Cola Kid to Blu-ray for the first time in June 2022.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Clearly made as a more commercial effort and with a recognizable ‘name actor’ in the lead role, it lacks a lot of the weirdness that made some of his earlier work as compelling as it is, yet still remains a really entertaining and clever picture that’s worth checking out. Makavejev’s tendencies to point out the absurd and to work strange, offbeat humor into his work still shines through…” Ian Jane, Rock! Shock! Pop! (Blu-ray)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: GREATLAND (2020)

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DIRECTED BY: Dana Ziyasheva

FEATURING: Arman Darbo, Chloe Ray Warmoth, Jackie Loeb, Nick Moran,

PLOT: On his fifteenth birthday, Ulysses must live up to his namesake when his friend Ugly Duck is exiled to Repentance island.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: This is the only film I’ve seen that could hold its own on a double bill with Alien Crystal Palace. For those (many) of you who haven’t seen ACP, read on and I will attempt to explain…

COMMENTS: Early on in GREATLAND, an elite team of enforcers known as “The Optimists”—a flash-gay, scantily clad group of glamboyant men, one of whom is armed with a weapon decorated with shimmering hearts that reduces its target to sequins—vaporize an ancillary character. This man’s crime? He “invaded and contaminated the most sacred part of a woman,” and compounding that offense, he raised that crime’s result—his daughter, Ugly Duck—in an altogether “stone age” kind of way. Yessir, we’ve reached a post-post-post-modern future in GREATLAND, one in which there is no permitted gender or racial identity, and society seems to be tipping into no identifying as species, either. The citizens of Greatland are allowed to know only love, acceptance, and positivity.

The film’s first act seems to be an anti-progressivist screed, a reducto ad absurdum commentary on the destruction of traditional norms (gender and otherwise). An all powerful “Mother” program monitors the childlike populace with the firm-but-benevolent hand found in many dystopian visions. This film doesn’t seem like it could have been authored by your stereotypical reactionary, however. The satire is too spot-on, from the gloriously flaming gayness of the forces employed to maintain order, to the hyperkinetic “political” broadcasts featuring a wheelchair-bound, pansexual emcee who oversees the current contest for the official “Sweetheart of Greatland” (the contestants are a Dobermann Pischer and a Persian Cat).

Above and beyond the madness of its setting, this is a story about Ulysses (an altogether impressive Arman Darbo) and his pursuit of the invisible man’s daughter. GREATLAND works, mostly, as a quest narrative. Mostly. Just as it works, mostly, as a satire. Mostly. Around the halfway mark, we see a bit of the “outside world,” which starts to make some sense. “Greatland” is some kind of social-experiment-by-way-of-enslavement for the financial benefit of the inventors and propagators of the city in question. However, a minor application of logic makes this element crumble to pieces, as well. Dipping her fingers into so many subversive pies, Dana Ziyasheva ultimately upends the massive dessert tray she’s put together.

Does this make GREATLAND weaker than it could have been? Possibly—but it’s much better than my strained metaphor. The lumps of damaged pie filling and cracked crust still manage to sate both the eye (dystopia is rarely this colorful) and the psyche. The final note I made while watching this movie is an entire page covered with a question mark. A logical mind cannot hope to wrap this all together. But after finishing GREATLAND, bewildered though my reason was, I couldn’t deny the unpleasant lump in my stomach. Something dark and strange is happening in this movie, and its structural chaos and contradictions are perhaps part of the overall message. Ziyasheva seems to be saying we are doomed to terrible absurdity. Or perhaps she’s just having us on.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…(too) ambitiously weird… If GREATLAND is an allegory (and I have no doubt it is), I couldn’t tell you what it is trying to say or represent… As a simple fantasy romance, the film is perfectly engaging, but the society is way too bizarre (yes, even for me) and once the politics is introduced it becomes truly nonsensical.” -Alix Turner, ReadySteadyCut.com (contemporaneous)