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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, Shorts

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: “AFRAID SO” (2003) AND THE SHORT FILMS OF JAY ROSENBLATT, 2001-2011

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DIRECTED BY: Jay Rosenblatt

FEATURING THE VOICE OF: Garrison Keillor

PLOT (“AFRAID SO”): A series of questions are proffered, each of which elicits the unspoken title as a regretful affirmative, accompanied by a visual snippet reinforcing the dreadful outcome.

COMMENTS: With the advent of VHS tapes and later DVDs, a long-running market for the distribution of educational films and documentaries on 8mm and 16mm reels dried up in an instant. Schools and other institutions suddenly had storage closets full of unneeded film reels, and most were unceremoniously tossed in the trash. This development meant little to most people, but was a vital discovery for one man in particular: filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt, who rescued the unwanted footage and, for three decades, has repurposed that castoff celluloid into new forms, using images from the past to provide ironic counterpoint to the fears and anxieties of the present. We have seen this kind of resurrected montage before, most notably in “21-87”, Arthur Lipsett’s influential assemblage of rescued cutting-room-floor effluvia. (Among those who carried the torch was a very young film student named George Lucas, who drew upon Lipsett’s technique in his first work.) But where Lipsett used clips to carry the weight of delivering his message, Rosenblatt often deploys his found footage to serve a larger narrative, as subtext rather than text.

Consider the film recommended to us: “Afraid So,” unusual in Rosenblatt’s oeuvre for being an adaptation of Jeanne Marie Beaumont’s poem, which derives grim humor from the escalation of stakes, the questions it asks rising in significance from “Was the baggage rerouted?” to “Do I have to remove my clothes?” and eventually to “Is the bone broken?” Garrison Keillor’s trademark lethargic Minnesota demeanor (originally recorded for radio) is a good match for the piece, delivering a ruefully funny air of resigned doom, so it’s fair to think that visuals won’t add much to the poem’s impact. Initially, Rosenblatt seems to prove this thesis true. “Is it starting to rain?” yields drops in a puddle; “Are we out of coffee?” leads to a filling cup. But as Keillor progresses, Rosenblatt heightens the tension, choosing pictures that make the negative outcomes so much worse than what Beaumont’s words imply. “Will this go on my record?” is accompanied by footage of a man clubbing someone from behind in a public place, a crime distinct from the mere speeding ticket you might suspect. Similarly, “Will it leave a scar?” hints at a medical procedure, but Rosenblatt’s chosen clip makes it clear that the operation at hand is a mastectomy. Once we reach “Will this be in the papers?” and “Is my time up already?,” the title answer is not just worrisome, but deathly. Appropriate, then, that the only sound aside from Keillor’s voice is the piercing tri-tone of a weather alert. Yes, bad things are coming.

“Afraid So” was released on home video as part of a compilation of Continue reading IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: “AFRAID SO” (2003) AND THE SHORT FILMS OF JAY ROSENBLATT, 2001-2011 →

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CAPSULE: AN EVENING SONG (FOR THREE VOICES) (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Graham Swon

FEATURING: , , Peter Vack

PLOT: Barbara and Richard, married writers from the East Coast, move to the Midwest and hire Martha, a quietly pious local, as their maid.

COMMENTS: One narrator evokes simple matter-of-factness; the second narrator segues into a reminiscence of another world; and the final narrator readily apologizes for what he’s about to do. These three voices in Graham Swon’s feature, An Evening Song, are its body, spirit, and mind; with the three characters—an innocent country local named Martha, the disillusioned writer-prodigy Barbara, and her mentally restless husband, Richard—conveying the film’s philosophical pull and tug. Events do literally happen in An Evening Song (indeed, it is loosely based on real events and individuals), but Swon has crafted more of a meditation oscillating around a narrative through-line than a traditional drama.

Over the course of eighty-odd minutes, Swon’s players perform the strange and gentle decline of a marriage on the rocks. Relocating to the Middle of Nowhere, Iowa, two different writerly types observe their hired help from their own perspectives. Barbara, having begun to give up on life more than a decade prior, has reached a critical stage of ennui that is only slightly alleviated by the discovery of this mysterious, scarred country girl, who seems to embody a delightfully unsolvable riddle. Richard, devoid of any bent towards mysticism, is commendably observant and empathetic, and entranced by Martha as well—but as a riddle to attempt solving. Under the couple’s gaze, Martha gazes back: she perceives Barbara’s ethereality with admiration, but also perceives Richard’s constantly ticking pragmatism with appreciation. We have here a love triangle, of sorts.

But in what way? Swon raises many questions in this film—and wanders (with purpose) down many avenues. Richard, bless his heart, accommodates to his utmost, and for all we can observe is impossible to offend, disappoint, or anger. (This is for the best, no doubt, as he has found himself dropped right in the middle of two particularly conundrous individuals.) Barbara does love Richard (maybe, probably), but longs for a life in the mystical “nowhere” reminisced throughout her narrations—which Richard cannot provide. Martha, on the other hand, does: her piety and humility raise her to ineffable heights in a dream she conveys to Barbara during a climactic, quiet encounter in a placid field, after which the story pivots and moves irrevocably toward the dissolution of Barbara’s will to remain on this plane of existence.

The song continues, narrations bump up against one another and fuse, with all three becoming harmoniously concurrent during a contemplative, sleepless night-and-day meshing of perspectives. This film is no Eraserhead, to be certain; but it is a curious experience. With full marks for dreamy ethereality, Swon’s pocket-sized meditation manages a tension from its competing and complementary voices, creating something nearly imperceptible, maybe close to a nothing, but which lingers in the mind like a mystifying apparition.

An Evening Song (for Three Voices) completed a short run in New York last week and will play at the Acropolis in Los Angeles for one night only, May 29. We’ll let you know when it’s available online.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Stylistically, Swon’s film shares an aesthetic kinship with some of Guy Maddin’s films, but it is far less accessible… The ambition and craftsmanship are laudable, but the hallucinatory haze too often produces a sensation of narrative drift. Recommended with the above caveats for experienced patrons of unconventional cinema” — Joe Bendel, J.B. Spins (contemporaneous)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE SURFER (2024)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Julian McMahon, Nic Cassim

PLOT: A divorced father (Nicolas Cage) plans to buy the Australian beachside house he grew up in and teach his son to surf the waves like he did as a boy, but local “surf gangsters” torment him, insisting the beach is for “locals only.”

The Surfer (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: The metaphor is obvious, but apt: this is a movie where you just catch Cage’s wave and ride it where it takes you, relishing the lack of control.

COMMENTS: As we open, Nicolas Cage (whose character is never named, merely credited as “The Surfer”) merely wants to take his kid (credited as “The Kid”) surfing on the beach where he grew up. He promises, in a bit of ironic foreshadowing, that catching a particularly gnarly wave is nothing short of a “short sharp shock of violence on the shore.” His dreams are dashed when a self-appointed surf cop in a Santa hat informs him that this public beach is for “locals only.” Outnumbered by the surf-gangsters (“Bay Boys”), Cage retreats to the overlook-cum-rest stop where he will spend most of the rest of the movie, anxiously attempting to contact his associate Mike to raise the additional $100,000 he needs posthaste to purchase his father’s old homestead on a cliff overlooking the beach. The Bay Boys’ bullying continues, however. First, Cage loses his surfboard; then, after his car battery and cell battery die, he finds himself stranded and subjected to increasing harassment. All the while, more details emerge suggesting that he may not be the completely together businessman he presents himself as, while golden-hued flashbacks suggest a youth that might not have been as carefree as he remembers.

What follows for Cage is a complete breakdown, as the script strips the bourgeoisie accoutrements of civilization away from him one by one, leaving him—at least temporarily—destitute. Accumulating a series of small wounds and suffering from short-term malnutrition and dehydration as he bakes in the Christmas sun, Cage drifts into a second-act fever dream where his very identity comes into question. About the only local who isn’t outright hostile to him is a scraggly beach bum (credited only as “The Bum”) who bunks in a discarded car in the same parking lot, and who has been bullied by the Bay Boys for decades now. Cage seems doomed to follow in his footsteps.

Theater patrons are advised to wear sunscreen, as the bright cinematography might give you sunburn, and when the screen starts wavering like high tide has briefly crested over the film, you might wonder if you’re experiencing heat stroke yourself. Francois Tetaz’s ultracool score, full of harp arpeggios and wordless vocals, takes its nostalgic period cues more from exotica than surf music, giving it a grandiose moodiness that constantly threatens to teeter into psychedelia. Finnegan’s visuals cross that line in the third act.

Cage himself is relatively restrained, more in Pig than Mandy mode; but of course, restrained for Cage can involve him force feeding a dead rat to a battered enemy. The fact that we expect, and accept, craziness from Cage makes him the perfect actor for this exercise in masculine delusionalism. Research confirmed my suspicions that this script about an upper middle-class man undergoing a midlife crisis explored via a water sport was explicitly inspired by another famous The S____er (among other sources). The Surfer, naturally, doesn’t quite reach its predecessor’s heights; it’s far more scattered, lacking its forebear’s intense focus on a single character, bringing a manospherish cult and hallucinatory red herrings into the equation. But The Surfer (suggested alternate title: The Sufferer) has a similar empathetic effect that hits home for men of a certain age and marital status.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“‘The Surfer’ is weird and wily, and while it doesn’t always connect, it maintains a strange presence that’s intriguing.”–Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com

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CAPSULE: BATMAN NINJA VS. YAKUZA LEAGUE (2025)

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ニンジャバットマン対ヤクザリーグ

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DIRECTED BY: , Shinji Takagi

FEATURING: Voices of , Romi Park, Yûki Kaji, Takaya Kamikawa, Rie Kugimiya,  Kazuhiro Yamaji; Joe Daniels, Molly Searcy, Bryson Baugus, Aaron Campbell, Karlii Hoch, John Swasey (English dub)

PLOT: The morning after returning to contemporary Gotham from feudal Japan, Batman finds an ominous landmass floating in the stratosphere and an entire nation wiped from the globe.

COMMENTS: It is another normal day in Gotham. Batman, Robin, Red Robin, and Red Hood are assembled in Wayne Manor. Yakuza are falling from the sky. This unlikely weather has been plaguing Gotham for the past month, claims Commissioner Gordon, who at least is spared the sight of the islands of Japan floating ominously above the city. Batman, as befits a Detective Comics hero, suspects that something isn’t quite right.

Junpei Mizusaki and Shinji Takagi pick up where Batman Ninja left off. Gorilla Grod, it appears, was not the mastermind behind the diabolical doings which grafted DC’s rogues gallery to feudal Japan. Grod’s space-time disrupter has apparently switched gears to plant the Justice League into a facsimile of contemporary Japan: one ruled over by warring yakuza clans, which are in turn lorded over by the erstwhile crime fighters. As Batman comes to terms with this development, his family team of good-doers square off in grand comics-cinematic style against the West-meets-East imaginings of impossibly powerful villains.

The filmmakers pull off this stunt with aplomb and plenty of explosions. There is never a dull moment as the plot twists along its appropriately circuitous path. Exotic delights abound, be they Green Lantern’s “death dice” tumbling their luminescent emerald destruction down upon one of the heroes, Robin being trapped inside a claw machine filled with California rolls, origami folds of space and time shifting disastrously in the arch villain’s lair, or more prosaically when evil-Aquaman tumbles to the ground after sparring with time-shifted—but thankfully, still Justice-League-y—Wonder Woman. (The subtitle options obliged me to watch the Japanese-dialogue version with “English for the Hard of Hearing”. This kept me informed of explosions and music, but regrettably did not provide the written explanation, “Massive Thud of a 20-Foot Silver Catfish Crashing to the Ground.”) Whoever may have had the power to restrain the creative team her obviously had no inclination so to do, which reminds me that never before have I seen an orbital yakuza launcher powered through a cycling gyre manifested by the world’s fastest man.

It’s all pretty nuts and a whole lot of fun. The surprises found in the interpretations of this solidly American franchise throughout the two parts (Batman Ninja / vs. the Yakuza League) are plentiful enough that I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that both films together would fit nicely in our Apocrypha: their voracious vim, endless excesses, and infinite ingenuity make this epic adventure a mighty Boff! Bonk! and Pow! right to the brainpan in manner you don’t see over here on the boring side of the Pacific.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…equal parts exciting action and completely ludicrous comedy, making it a faithful, loving tribute to both anime and Western superheroes. It looks great, the character designs are brilliant, and it features surprisingly funny gags. Anyone looking for more will be bored or (more likely) confused.”–Sam Barsanti, IGN (contemporaneous)

Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League (Blu-Ray + Digital)

Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League (Blu-Ray + Digital)
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CAPSULE: BETTER MAN (2024)

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Better Man is currently available on VOD for purchase or rental.

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DIRECTED BY: Michael Gracey

FEATURING: Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Alison Steadman, , Raechelle Banno, Robbie Williams

PLOT: The life and raucous times of pop superstar Robbie Williams, told from his humble beginnings to global stardom with details of his battles with fame, addiction, and the desperate struggle to win his father’s love—and throughout, the singer is portrayed by a motion-captured, computer-generated chimpanzee.

Still from Better Man (2024)

COMMENTS: When it comes to pop music success, America is a notoriously tough nut to crack. For every ABBA or BTS who overcomes the odds to score a #1 single in the States, there’s a Cliff Richard or a Kylie Minogue who struggles to sell to Americans what the rest of the world is eager to buy. And then there’s Robbie Williams: a certified international pop phenomenon who jettisoned success as a member of the boy band Take That to establish a solo career that took nearly every corner of the world by storm, with 7 #1 singles and 13 #1 albums in his home country alone. But worldwide fame means nothing in the U.S., where he has only ever managed to crack the Billboard Hot 100 twice (not counting his old band’s solitary chart appearance, a #7 hit). So pitching Williams’ life story to an audience where he is practically an unknown quantity makes for an unquestionably hard sell. When viewed in this light, it actually becomes incredibly sensible to replace the main character with a talking, singing, dancing monkey. Now they’ve got your attention.

Honestly, it’s so much better to know nothing about our subject, as it frees us from the weight of familiarity and expectation. Teams of animators (and the grueling work of mo-cap stand-in Davies) labored to bring the authentic Williams to life in primate form, but we ignorant bumpkins can embrace his infectious energy and unrestrained showmanship with the unforced glee of a toddler seeing fireworks for the first time. Make no mistake: this is a pretty standard musical biopic, the kind that Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story should have rendered unapproachable, complete with tales of addiction, famous name-drops, and lamentations over the hollowness of fame and fortune, But Better Man proceeds with so much verve, so much melodramatic theatricality, and yes, so much photorealistic cartoon chimp, that it manages to rise above its clichéd trappings and become an inspired exemplar of the genre.

Director Gracey, late of The Greatest Showman, has a grandiose, -esque eye for over-the-top storytelling, and the monkey gives him creative license to bypass reality in a number of areas. Williams’ highs are grand spectacles, with swooping cameras, pyrotechnic light shows, and frames cluttered with activity, while the lows are phantasmagoric nightmares of drugs and shadows and deep water. Gracey feels empowered to hold nothing back, and he’s not worried about how authentic or truthful it might appear, because hey, there’s a freaking monkey in the center of every scene. Williams’ animal avatar turns out to be a savvy trick, sparing the filmmakers from complaints over hiring a lead actor who doesn’t resemble the genuine article. Even better, it also plays into Williams’ own self-image issues (impostor syndrome plagues him from the very beginning) without ever treating us as so stupid that we won’t get the metaphor. Better Man wisely never sells out its own joke, instead weaving it into the overall circus vibe.

Williams’ story isn’t especially compelling beyond the usual rags-to-riches-to-ruin-to-redemption pathway common to rock stars who don’t die young. So his boisterous personality, a blend of cheeky snark, crippling self-doubt, and an immeasurable compulsion to perform, is crucial to making the film work. Fortunately, Gracey seems to share those urges, and the film soars in its most bombastic moments. Williams’ meet-cute with fellow pop star Nicole Appleton is an electric dance number that turns the pair into a modern-day Astaire and Rogers. A funeral seamlessly blends into a packed concert venue and back again. Williams’ iconic Knebworth concert becomes a battlefield for his personified demons, transforming into an orgy of violence that would be at home in one of ’s sojourns to Middle Earth. And above all is the utterly thrilling act-one closer in which Take That achieves pop domination to the pulsing tune of “Rock DJ,” shot as a CGI-festooned oner in which the band completely takes over Regent Street with an infectious beat and joyously frenetic choreography. (It’s a remarkable flex, essentially forcing his old band to sing and dance to one of his solo smashes, as if a Paul McCartney bio had staged the rest of the Beatles singing “Band on the Run.”) Better Man seems to know that it can’t rely on a pre-sold audience, so it leans heavily into Williams as the consummate performer, willing to do anything to please the crowd and ultimately earning his colossal success.

For most viewers, the shock of the monkey is over in the first five minutes of the film, if not in the trailer that preceded it. If you’re all in on that, then there’s nothing especially weird going forward to derail you. But Better Man tells this tale with a vigor and a wild abandon that makes it a surprisingly compelling watch, even if you have no familiarity or even curiosity about the subject. From the outset, Williams makes a simple vow: to be “right fucking entertaining.” It’s a promise he keeps. Welcome to the monkey house.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Amazingly, the monkey conceit, while certainly strange (and let’s also add, beautifully rendered, with human qualities that give us a full range of emotions while also looking a lot like Robbie Williams), is not the craziest thing in Better Man. That honor would go to the picture’s musical numbers… The movie isn’t just “crazy” – it’s crazy. Trying to describe it, one sounds like a lunatic… Weirdly, the familiarity of the biographical beats ease us into the formal daring. If its structure and script were as unhinged as its style, the film might have been unwatchable.” – Bilge Ebiri, Vulture (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Anonymous, who called it “a pretty good movie all things considered, but I’m still wondering why.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)