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Apocryphally Weird

40*. MODUS OPERANDI (2009)

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“The more beautiful, free-spirited women you can get into a low-budget film, the easier it is for the audience to forgive your script.”–Frankie Latina

DIRECTED BY: Frankie Latina

FEATURING: Randy Russell, Danny Trejo, Mark Borchardt, Barry Poltermann, Nikki Johnson, Michael Sottile

PLOT: CIA agent Stanley Cashay—the best in the business—is dragged out of retirement to recover a pair of stolen briefcases in exchange for the name of the operative who murdered his wife. A network of spies around the world assist him in his quest, while the cases repeatedly change hands in a bloodthirsty quest. When he discovers that they contain videos of sadistic ritual murders, Cashay is spurred to action.

Still from Modus Operandi (2009)

BACKGROUND:

    • Latina has described the movie as his attempt to make his own version of his favorite movie, Apocalypse Now.
    • The film is credited as being “presented by” adult film star Sasha Grey. Lending her name appears to be the extent of her involvement in the film.
    • Danny Trejo filmed all his scenes in a single eight-hour stint before he had to catch a plane back to Los Angeles. These were the only scenes in the movie that Latina shot with on-set sound.
    • Latina accomplished the Tokyo scenes by using the proceeds from his job at a casino to send actress Johnson and a cameraman to Japan to capture the footage.
    • Most of the film was shot in Latina’s hometown of Milwaukee, and he takes advantage of some of the region’s architectural wonders to serve as the backdrop for his globetrotting hero. Among the locations featured in the opening credits are the dramatic angles of Santiago Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Museum, the Domes of the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory, and the Infinity Room at the notorious House on the Rock.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: It feels like half of Modus Operandi consists of people sitting around receiving phone calls. They’re just minding their own business, drinking cocktails or hanging out in a hot tub or drinking cocktails while hanging out in a hot tub, and then a phone call comes. This tic reaches its apotheosis when a man takes such a call while he is grooming himself and while his female companion is casually shaving her pubic region. She’s totally nude, her crotch is completely covered in shaving cream, and she’s right up in the guy’s face with it. It’s the most perfect example of this film’s unique blend of overt sex with zero sexiness.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Casey Thunderbird requests the pleasure of Black Licorice’s participation in a spy venture; you got your porn audition tapes in my spy movie

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Modus Operandi feels like the movie you would get if aliens were asked to make a James Bond movie and did all their research by asking a drunk at a bar. With its intense focus on crowd-pleasing violence and nudity (of both the male and female varieties), it’s the cinematic equivalent of all dessert/no veggies, except the desserts were created on Nailed It! The infectious joy of making the movie is paired with an extraordinarily high level of amateurism, making for a movie that knows it’s ridiculous and yet somehow manages to become even more ridiculous in the process.


Original trailer for Modus Operandi

COMMENTS: Frankie Latina sets the tone before a moment of Continue reading 40*. MODUS OPERANDI (2009) →

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ASTEROID CITY (2023)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Jake Ryan, , , Grace Edwards, Tom Hanks, , Brian Cranston

PLOT: Playwright Conrad Earp writes “Asteroid City,” about a photojournalist visiting the titular location with his gifted son for a Junior Stargazers convention; everyone is stranded there when an extraterrestrial event causes the town to be quarantined.

Still from Asteroid City (2023)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: We’ve been waiting and waiting for Wes to go full weird; he takes his swat with Asteroid City. It’s also the weirdest movie Tom Hanks has ever appeared in—a low bar, for sure, but that has to count for something.

COMMENTS: Skipping over the prologue for the moment, Asteroid City is everything you expect from a Wes Anderson movie: symmetrical, meticulous, stylized, deadpan, with a large cast of familiar faces portraying well-defined quirky characters snapping out witty dialogue. The locale is a mid-century America desert village—a one-road stop with no more than a gas station, diner, motel, observatory, train tracks, and an unfinished on-ramp to nowhere—with atomic tests periodically sprouting mushroom clouds in the background. The color palette is turquoise skies and beige sand, with the occasional burst of radioactive orange, bathed in (as the stage directions instruct) clean, unforgiving light. Anderson manages to make shot-on-location look like shot-on-a-sound-stage; you’re amazed when a car drives off into the distance and doesn’t crash into a matte painting backdrop, but somehow just keeps going. The film locates itself in a gee-whiz Cold War fantasy, a mythical time where bright middle-schoolers design their own jet packs and particle beams and everyone has complete faith in the US military—and why shouldn’t they? They haven’t lost a war yet.

All of this makes for a perfect sandbox for Anderson to drop what may be the most impressive cast he’s yet worked with into. Wes stalwart Schwartzman takes the lead as a stoic pipe-smoking war photographer, with a “brainiac” son and a trio of elementary school triplets (who think they’re witches) in tow. Scarlett Johansson plays a movie star attracted to battered woman roles. Tom Hanks shows up as a grumpy grandpa (in a role that was probably originally written with in mind.) Steve Carrell is the solicitous local motel owner (beginning almost every sentence with “I understand.”) is an astronomer. is a mechanic. There are various-sized cameos by , , and, um, . Furthermore, a gaggle of students, parents, teachers, military personnel, singing cowboys, and others inhabit the hamlet, making up a real, if temporary, community. And yet, the stage never feels too crowded; everyone gets their moment to shine in this mosaic of comedy.

It plays like a quite usual, sophisticated, twee Anderson outing, except that it isn’t. In the first place, the artifice is doubled (or tripled), since the main story is, in fact, a play written by a Tennessee Williamsesque playwright (Edward Norton) and directed by an East Coast workaholic (Adrian Brody), whom we see at work developing the production. And we’re further introduced to these characters through a television documentary hosted by Brian Cranston (who occasionally, and amusingly, drifts into the theatrical production). The action occasionally shifts from the main story (in widescreen color) to the fictional background material (in black and white, Academy ratio). At about the film’s midpoint, Anderson inserts what may be the most audacious—and hilarious—scene he’s ever shot. (You might guess what the event is, but never in a million years would you guess the manner in which it happens.) And the third act goes especially bonkers, as the playwright explains that he wants the finale to be a case of the entire cast dreaming due to their shared cosmic experience, and enlists an actor’s studio to help stimulate his creativity. More fourth wall breaking follows, there’s a hoedown featuring a song that starts with the lyric “Dear alien, who art in Heaven,” and a repetitive chant at the climax flirts with the surreal. The film doesn’t always hang together, but the dialogue is razor sharp, the cast is magnetic, and the laughs are abundant. I don’t know if it’s Wes’ best movie, but it is his boldest and most consistently surprising.

Asteroid City doesn’t seem to know what it wants to say, and that is, it seems, what it wants to say. “I don’t understand the play,” Schwartzman complains, breaking character. The answer is that he doesn’t have to understand it. The author doesn’t. He just needs to act it.

The Asteroid City DVD/Blu-ray comes with a short making of featurette. We would not be surprised to see a more elaborate release down the line (the likes to publish every Anderson feature they can get their mitts on.)

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The purest distillation of what this director brings to cinema, it’s beautiful to look at, surreal, nostalgic and funny in a weird, distanced way.”–Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle (contemporaneous)

Asteroid City - Blu-ray + DVD + Digital

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CAPSULE: ONCE UPON A TIME IN UGANDA (2021)

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Once Upon a Time in Uganda can currently be rented on VOD.

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DIRECTED BY: Cathryne Czubek

FEATURING: , Alan Hofmanis, Harriet Nabwana

PLOT: A disillusioned American film programmer travels to Uganda to find Nabwana I.G.G., the director whose trailers for homemade action movies like Who Killed Captain Alex? have recently gone viral.

Still from Once Upon a Time in Uganda (2021)

COMMENTS: Wakaliwood seeped into the West’s collective consciousness slowly. The earliest fans boarded the train after seeing the viral Who Killed Captain Alex? trailer on YouTube in 2010 (five years before the finished movie would see the light of day). The first time I can clearly remember hearing about Nabwana I.G.G. was reading the description of Bad Black in the Fantasia Festival’s 2017 program (a screening subsequently given a brief-but-enthusiastic writeup by Giles Edwards).

As it turns out, my interest was indirectly sparked by Alan Hofmanis, Once Upon a Time in Uganda‘s NYC film programmer who, reeling from a devastating breakup and fascinated by Who Killed Captain Alex?, spirited himself away to the slums of Kampala in search of Nabwana. Hofmanis devoted the next several years to helping Nabwana promote his Wakaliwood output to film festivals around the world, while occasionally appearing in front of the camera in the recurring role of the muzungu [white man] who gets beat up—or in the case of one cannibal movie, who gets feasted on.

Creating a story from this material, instead of a mere talking heads doc, requires devoting a good deal of time to Alan and his struggles. (The heroic opening shot of Alan standing on a mountaintop cost more by itself than three or four Nabwana feature films). The focus on Alan is a bit unfortunate, because honestly, although basically a good guy, he isn’t the most compelling character. That honor doesn’t even go to Nabwana, the ex-bricklayer who is much more grounded in reality than his crazy-ass filmic output would lead one to believe, or to his appealingly supportive wife and collaborator Harriet. No, the real stars here are the movies themselves, lightning-paced barrages of kung fu, over-the-top firefights, model helicopters wrecking CGI skyscrapers, and a narrator constantly screaming and pumping up the movie in the background. (In fact, the one crew member whom we should have seen much more of is VJ Emmie, who provides the most unique element of Wakaliwood films: the running narration. Emmie’s commentary is the film’s own pre-supplied MST3K track: during one desperate scene, he moans, “I just want some good news.” A character immediately enters the scene: “Sir, I have some bad news.” Emmie gets a short interview and does his spiel over the opening credits, but deserved more coverage).

Despite its best efforts, though, Uganda is a talking-heads/behind-the-scenes doc, with only a thin story arc (which you might have already guessed). There are a couple of humorously inventive moments early on: director Czubek recreates Alan’s first encounter with a Wakaliwood actor as chase scene, and a fight scene suddenly breaks out in the background of one interview. But most of the time, this professionally put-together doc approaches the material from a conventional angle—so that Wakaliwood’s more delirious approach to moviemaking stands out in relief. Uganda serves as a perfect appetizer for those considering pigging out on a Wakaliwood banquet, or as a treasure trove of context for those who already have a seat at the trough. Either way, you’ll come away believing that this unassuming Kampala ghetto does indeed produce da best of da best action movies!!!!

For low-budget filmmakers, Uganda is simultaneously inspiring, intimidating, and depressing. Inspiring for how easy Nabwana makes it look to create a movie from scratch; intimidating because of just how much better he is at it than you will ever be; and depressing because, despite making 20+ movies and racking up millions of YouTube views, he hasn’t made a dime (at least, not at the time this doc was released; I’d wager he’s turned a small profit since).

You can catch Nabwana’s most popular films (and other goodies) on YouTube via the official Wakaliwood channel.

Legendary producer Ben Barenholz had directed a short and currently unavailable Wakaliwood documentary profiling Nabwana, simply entitled Wakaliwood, in 2012 (before Captain Alex was even completed!) Hofmanis co-produced.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Director Cathryne Czubek and co-director Hugo Perez present this unlikely creative inspiration for Nabwana’s work with real depth, shedding more light on what some may dismiss as explosion-laden nonsense… Once Upon a Time In Uganda recognizes both the personal importance and creative passion that lie within even the most ridiculous art.”–Lisa Laman, The Spool (contemporaneous)

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FANTASIA 2023: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: KILLING ROMANCE (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Lee Won-suk

FEATURING: Lee Ha-nee, Lee Sun-kyun, Gong Myoung

PLOT: Erstwhile “It”-girl Yeo-rae will do anything to escape the clutches of her possessive husband—even if it means enlisting the aid of one of her bumbling super-fans to commit murder.

Still from Killing Romance (2023)

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: A common grumble we have about Wes Anderson on this site is that he doesn’t go far enough. Lee Won-suk does, with maximal ridiculousness rendered in an Andersonian tint.

COMMENTS: During the audience chatter that immediately followed the film, it was mentioned that, in its native South Korea, Killing Romance is not much dissimilar from other films of its genre. I have no reason to doubt this—all the less-so for having a limited exposure to South Korean films in general, and their romantic comedies in particular—but even if Lee Won-Suk’s film were the most run-of-the-mill outing to found in that East Asian nation, it was unlike anything I have seen.

Framed as a storybook (possibly added to ground potential American audiences), Killing Romance tells the tale of Yeo-rae, famous for a staggeringly idiotic reason, but nonetheless someone who won the hearts of many fans. While recovering emotionally from a badly panned film performance, she meets mega-mogul environmentalist Jonathan “Jonny” Na. They wed, retreat from the world for seven years on a remote island, and then return to Seoul. There Yeo-rae meets a neighbor, lovable loser and fan club president Bum-woo, and Jonny’s darker side emerges.

This darker side manifests in the form of possessiveness, down-to-the-smile control freakery, and occasional beatings (of sorts) via tangerine. Amidst the randomness (when the murder schemes kick off, super sauna steam heat and countless bowls of bean soup are among the attempts at offing Jonny), musical numbers (spoiler alert: the film climaxes with a sing-off, in karaoke so the audience can join), and animal encounters (a throwaway joke about Bum-woo at the start manages to become a major plot point somehow) is the phenomenon of Jonny Na—a masterfully whimsical sociopath. He loves his wife, but she must be “just so”; he loves to be loved, and finds this “so gooooooood” (a running gag); and he seems genuinely confused that the world does not always bend to his wishes. Lee Sun-kyun’s performance nearly steals the show.

Except there is so much going on here. I’ll spare you further lists and sentences and wrap up with a brief anecdote. Over the course of the screening, a young woman in the audience removed her shoes and neatly placed them on the floor below; perched herself atop the edge of the fold-down theater seat; and proceed to sit in a state of grin-stricken happy tension throughout the feature. Killing Romance is a sheer delight, and one of the few “quirky” movies to turn that corner into weirdful wonderment.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…weird, campy, hilarious, and actually offers a cathartic revenge for anyone who has lived with a horrible spouse.” —Kate Sánchez, But Why Tho? (festival screening)

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FANTASIA 2023: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Cameron Cairnes, Colin Cairnes

FEATURING: , Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Ingrid Torelli

PLOT: In a bid to renew his contract, not-quite-popular-enough talk show host Jack Delroy pulls out one stop too many for his “sweeps week” Halloween broadcast.

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: There is madness, realism, grubby dealing, and demonic intrusion. And plenty of humor. This was my fourth feature of the day, so I may have been addled already, but the increasingly wobbly stack of macabre craziness and moral compromise left me (very pleasantly) jittery as I emerged from this fast-paced little horror gem.

COMMENTS: Pinch me, I’m nightmaring.

That does not quite work, but do you know what does? That’s right: the Cairnes Brothers’ Late Night With the Devil. From the brown-drab authenticity of the broadcast television set, to the sideburns and wide collars, to the obliging gullibility of the live studio audience, and (particularly) to David Dastmalchian’s at-long-last-leading-man turn as Jack Delroy. And it nearly slipped my mind somehow, but this is a “found footage” horror story; one that is actually interesting from start to finish. (Perhaps the weirdest thing that could be said of any found footage yarn.)

After a brief introduction covering Jack Delroy’s rise to late night television stardom, the film unfolds in real time as the Halloween episode of “Night Owls …with Jack Delroy” kicks off. Jack’s guest line-up include a renowned spiritualist, a renowned debunker of spiritualists (and other charlatans), and a parapsychologist working to cure the young survivor of a mass suicide by a Satanic death cult. The screen widens and the brown-heavy palette of color shifts to black and white during the commercial breaks, as the action shifts to the backstage element. What starts out playful slips further and further into paranoia, then fear, then body horror. The slide is leisurely paced, as master TV presenter Jack Delroy attempts to keep his awkward guests in line, as well as the developing presence of supreme evil.

Late Night With the Devil touches on many elements with considerable assurance. Delroy’s association with a mysterious society “the Grove” lays the groundwork for a late film reveal (do not worry: you won’t guess this). The psychologist and Satanic cult survivor are obvious nods to Pazder and Smith, authors of “Michelle Remembers” and catalysts of the “Satanic Panic” of the ’80s (Ingrid Torelli as the girl deserves special mention for bringing something new to the well-worn “creepy child” trope). The ill-fated spiritualist, Christou, is a perfect amalgam of the various foreign “mystics” prevalent at the time. And the debunker, Carmichael Hunt, carries a hubris worthy of late magician-era , but with a tenth of the charm. And that’s only the quality performances in front of the studio camera.

The question as to whether this is Apocrypha-worthy is a matter I’ve contemplated for some days now. I am unsure. When I consider the consistent quality and feel of Late Night With the Devil, I am completely taken in: its realistic aura impressing me still, despite my knowledge of the artifice—which suggests quality filmmaking, not necessarily “weird” filmmaking. Mind you, my enthusiasm has been on the mark often enough; the triple-climax finale, with the stakes ratcheted up each time, is an impressive gamble that pays off handsomely. And no, I’m not worried that I’m giving away too much. I feel certain that you, too, will get lost in Jack Delroy’s battle for Good Ratings—and his battle against the Evil One.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This isn’t the scariest movie, but neither is it entirely a self-conscious joke. The Cairnes maintain an astute balance between pop-culture irony, familiar if not always predictable thrills (including some creature/gore FX), and a kind of hallucinatory mass-media surrealism — one that recalls the title of a 1970s cautionary tome about TV, ‘The Plug-In Drug.'”–Dennis Harvey, Variety (festival screening)