Tag Archives: Satire

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CAPSULE: EDDINGTON (2025)

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FEATURING: , Pedro Pascal, , Deirdre O’Connell, Cameron Mann, Micheal Ward, Matt Gomez Hidaka, Luke Grimes

PLOT: Spurred by his dislike of mask mandates and by personal animosity, an asthmatic sheriff in the tiny town of Eddington, NM runs for mayor, a decision that leads to a web of lies and violence and brings him into conflict with BLM protesters, antifa, and a pedophile-conspiracy cult.

Still from Eddington (2025)

COMMENTS: Come with Eddington and venture back in time to distant 2020, when a plague encompassed the Earth. Remember people’s noses constantly sliding out of their masks? Lining up to enter grocery stores spaced six feet apart? Conspiracists seizing upon citations of the word “coronavirus” from before 2019 as evidence of a “plandemic”? A swab roughly jammed up your nasal cavity at a drive-through testing clinic? Kids with assault weapons becoming YouTube celebrities? Banners hanging off cars bearing messages like “YOUR BEING MANIPULATED” [sic]? Incoherent anger and incipient violence in the air everywhere? It’s all here, in a cinematic memorial marking the moment America broke.

Eddington pits Joaquin Phoenix, a sheriff who commands little respect from his counterparts at the Pueblo tribal police, the populace at large, or even his own frigid wife, against Pedro Pascal, the incumbent mayor who’s cloyingly conciliatory in public, a hypocrite in private, and in bed with a data-center development, to boot. Phoenix’s impulsive plan to run for mayor against Pascal is the first of many poorly planned decisions. Things are complicated by incestuous love affairs in the town of about 2,000 lost souls. The politics of the wider world impinge on this microcosm in a sometimes humorous way; BLM protesters numbering in the dozens “block” Eddington’s main street, and a campaign rally at a Mexican restaurant draws even fewer folks. Still, although the political stakes are small, the body count will eventually be shockingly high.

Aster’s mockery is broad when it comes to the young privileged white kids too-eagerly radicalized by the Black Lives Matter movement—despite the fact that there is only one African American in this dusty hamlet, and he’s a policeman. The conservatives are treated with a bit more nuance. Sheriff Joe’s reluctance to mask up has a reasonable basis in asthma, and his wife and mother-in-law’s seductions into conspiracy culture are well-founded in mild mental illnesses greatly exacerbated by the stresses of lockdown. Aster makes every fevered scenario he dredges up from those dark days  feel as crazy and relatable as it really was. The cast is excellent: Joaquin Phoenix stumbles and follows a gut feeling that always leads him astray, Pedro Pascal plays perhaps his least likable character, melancholy Emma Stone mopes in bed until she finally breaks. And, although it is not a particularly weird movie for most of its running time, the climax gets wild and disorienting, as Aster puts Phoenix through misfortunes and anxieties recalling Beau at his most fearful. No one comes out of this experience unscathed; the survivors all suffer from long Covid.

Had Eddington been made in 2015, it would have played like an outlandish satire in the vein of Southland Tales. Coming in 2025, it seems almost like a story you dimly remember scrolling past on your Instagram feed.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a laborious and weirdly self-important satire which makes a heavy, flavourless meal of some uninteresting and unoriginal thoughts…”–Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (festival screening)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MUTANT ALIENS (2001)

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DIRECTED BY: Bill Plympton

FEATURING: Voices of Francine Lobis, Dan McComas, George Casden, Matthew Brown, Jay Cavanaugh

PLOT: Josie has kept her eyes on the skies for twenty years hoping to witness her father’s return from space; but on his re-entry, he is not alone.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA:

“The president’s being eaten by a nose!”

Check the regulations.

COMMENTS: Early on in Mutant Aliens, we observe a young woman’s inner dialogue about whether or not to bang her beau. As a right-shoulder nun and left-shoulder slut exchange arguments, insults, and blows, her beau stands eagerly nearby, stretching out the front of his underpants’ waistband. Within said pants, Plympton manifests a series of metaphors: a launching missile, a locomotive, a hammer-and-anvil, etc. The scene culminates with voracious lovemaking over the woman’s observation console, the thrustful energy knocking her boob into a control lever. On the display screen, she observes an unidentified object as it comes crashing through Earth’s atmosphere.

In many ways, this vignette encapsulates not merely the building blocks of Space Mutants, but perhaps the animation-auteur’s modus operandi: Plympton suffers an insatiable desire to play with shapes and lines, and has spent his career developing plotlines sturdy enough to support his lively doodling. Mutant Aliens is an absurd narrative—Earth astronaut returns after twenty years with a mad yarn about about love and war with space noses and finger-riding space eyeballs—that features every strange curvy-cue, heaving bio-mass, and ultra-violent encounter his fan base has come to expect. Advertisement goons drool and thrust over the prospect of orbitally projected commercials; a bored secretary devises elaborate fornicatory scenarios between her left and right hands; and mutant aliens reign gross-but-cute terror on the various government suits desperately attempting to contain their menace.

Also, there’s Jesus drag racing—in song. Plympton has several axes to grind: against religion (I’m guessing he had to endure plenty of “Satanic Panic” and TV evangelism during his formative years), against Big Media (see also The Tune), against the military-industrial complex (see also I Married a Strange Person), and so on. And though he’s considerably heavy-handed—a lot of throbbing linework and delightfully icky sound effects go into his screeding—it’s hard to object. The cartoonish excess adds up to cartoonish dismissiveness, and his films feel more like jolly, middle finger Fuck Yous! than like some mopey killjoy whingeing through a megaphone.

Sure, sure, bits sag here and there (not unlike the occasional swinging breast or phallus), but by the time you notice a lull, Plympton’s wonderfully distracted pen moves on to another blast of ridiculousness. And this is the biggest draw for Plympton fans: in a way, he does the same thing over and over, within each narrative framework as well as from movie to movie. However, this “same thing” is playing around with his medium as hard as he can while poking the prudish, the pompous, and the otherwise powerful.

And that’s just peachy.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Juxtaposing the sentimental and the bizarre comes naturally to Plympton, whose films are truly singular — surreal, lovably crude, and sweet-natured but grosser than heck, with blown-up heads and bitten-off fingers galore. Mutant Aliens is no exception… Weird stuff, I tell you, but it’s terribly cute and good-natured somehow.”–Marrit Ingman, The Austin Chronicle (contemporaneous)

Mutant Aliens

Mutant Aliens
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Capsules

CAPSULE: LES SAIGNANTES (2005)

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AKA The Bloodettes, The Bloodiest

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DIRECTED BY: Jean-Pierre Bekolo

FEATURING: Adéle Ado, , Emile Abossolo

PLOT: When a high-ranking government official dies, Majolie enlists her best friend to segue the disaster into a business opportunity by throwing a trendy W.I.P.: “Wake for an Important Personality.”

COMMENTS: As said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro; and that’s exactly what these plucky heroines do. Set in the neon-drenched perpetual night of Yaounde, Cameroon, twenty years in the future, Bekolo’s genre-hopping Afro-futurist tale depicts a city caught up in the competing influences of power, money, sex, and an ancient elemental force called Mevoungou.

Majolie only discovers her client’s identity when searching his wallet after he suddenly expires from a heart attack during an acrobatic aerialist kink session. To her distress, he’s nearly ninety years old and not just a “granddaddy” but the “SGCC”: Secretary General of the Civil Cabinet. She calls her friend Chouchou to help her out of this mess, then promptly gets drunk.

After killing a bottle of whiskey together, the girls acknowledge the ominous presence of the spirit Mevoungou. Risking the danger of channeling this ambiguous power, they steal the SGCC’s AI driven car to dispose of the official’s body. To further complicate matters, Chouchou’s mother, attended by a bevy of mysterious Bene Gesserit-like priestesses, keeps calling her, arousing the suspicions of an idealistic young cop.

Throughout the course of their night the girls dodge a number of questionable characters, including an insolent cab driver and a nosy neighbor who invites herself along for the ride, along with the mundane inconveniences of a society rife with sexual harassment and government corruption. After bribing a cannibal butcher to chop up the body (he weeps when he tastes SGCC flesh), the girls hit upon the idea of holding a wake—except they need a full corpse to make that happen, and they now only have the head.

Bribing a mortician turns out to be a troublesome task. He’s annoyed at being dragged out his bed in order to supply a body and asks for far too much money. Chouchou doesn’t want to pay him, but Majolie insists the fee will be worth it. In an office decorated with a fish tank full of body parts they continue to haggle over the price. Once they reach a deal, the girls look over the unclaimed bodies to find a good match.

After a narrow escape from the Madame Director of the hospital, the girls dress for the funeral. The Wake for an Important Personality at first goes off without a hitch: a crowd shows up, there’s lots of food and drink, and even the SGCC’s family attends. The only minor disturbance occurs when his wife and daughter tearfully insist the body isn’t his. The girls catch the eye of Minister of State and target him as their new patron. Unfortunately, he too knows how to channel Mevoungou, and they find themselves facing a daunting adversary.

Simple and effective camera techniques (dissolves and double-exposures) conjure a world animated by unseen forces. The futuristic 2025 technology, from camera phones to self-driven cars with English-speaking interfaces, appears disconcertingly accurate (as does the tag line “We were already in 2025, and nothing much had changed”).

Action sequences pay homage to The Matrix, but the derivative fight scenes quickly give way to Majolie and Chouchou’s mesmerizing synchronized dances. In the final showdown they confront their enemy, and in order to preserve their autonomy must also fight off the potentially destructive influence of Mevoungou. Much remains unexplained about this enigmatic entity which kills, and laughs, and dances. It flows through the film like a current of weirdness and, much like in real life, whether the weird brings change for good or ill all depends on how you react to it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…as fascinating as it is obscure… Although the production values of this digitally shot film are threadbare, the bizarre visions of writer-director-editor Bekolo are not.”–Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle (contemporaneous)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: FATA MORGANA (1966)

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AKA Left–Handed Fate; Fata/Morgana

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DIRECTED BY: Vincente Aranda

FEATURING: Teresa Gimpera, Marianne Benet, Antonio Ferrandes, Alberto Dalbés

PLOT: When a literature professor predicts an advertising model will be the next victim of a black-gloved serial killer, a secret agent sets out to save her life.

Still from Fata Morgana (1966)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Inspired by quick-change artist extraordinaire Leopoldo Fregoli, Fata/Morgana dons the garb of several genres (fumetti, spy thriller, science fiction, giallo) only to disrobe just as quickly. Set during an unspecified cataclysmic event anticipating ‘s The Falls, the viewing experience mirrors an unsettled narrative reality. The killer’s identity is revealed early on but leads to an entirely unexpected outcome, and a closing scene eerily similar to Blow–Up‘s contentious and equally inconclusive ending (released the same year). Like the main character, the viewer is adrift amidst a world of shifting symbols. The eclectic style, along with the mysterious backdrop, ambiguous characters, and a uniquely bizarre murder weapon combine to create a Pop Art concoction with a seriously unhinged vibe.

COMMENTS: What would you do if you accidentally bumped into a blind man on the street and he said you were going to be murdered today? Poor Gim understandably freaks out. She doesn’t want to die, but she’s decided to stay behind while the rest of her unnamed city’s residents flee en masse. A mysterious catastrophe has occurred in London, and fear of it happening in other cities has rapidly spread around the globe.

Introduced via comic book panels set to an uptempo jazz beat, Fata Morgana aligns itself with the artistic sensibility of European adult comics and the beginnings of the giallo craze (‘s Blood and Black Lace was released two years earlier). The Professor (Ferrandis) prepares to present a lecture on the career of an unidentified serial killer, seen in black and white photographs clad in classic fedora with black trench coat and leather gloves. His victims are all young female models. The Professor’s careful study of horror literature, advertising imagery, and popular films leads to his “premonition” that cologne spokesmodel Gim (Gimpera) will be the killer’s next target.

Gim meets with friends and attends her modeling shoots, trying to retain some semblance of normality. Someone slashes her car tires, so she’s left to walk deserted streets between appointments. Her chance encounters with the city’s remaining inhabitants become increasingly threatening. A gang of silent teenage boys roams the city stealing billboards and appliances to create their own modernist clubhouse. The Professor gives a lecture on how to identify the victims of future crime, then stalks Gim while wearing a series of improbable disguises. Miriam (Benet), a survivor of the London event, spends hours in an “art chamber” staring at sculptures, before wandering the city in an aimless quest to find her lover Jerry (though enigmatic flashbacks suggest he’s already dead). Meanwhile, Agent JJ (Martí) desperately tries to save Gim from the killer while being thwarted by The Professor and everyone else he meets.

All Gim’s friends spout philosophy while trying to process their own impending doom in revealing yet pretentious dialogue:

“When we are awake, we all live in the same world, but when we dream, each lives in his own.”

“A chessboard has no place for dreams. Who wins in chess, loses in life.”

“To be or not to be. To die. To sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream,” Gim chants in stream of consciousness while displaying a bottle of cologne. “But I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”

“Very good, very good. Repeat just the last sentence,” says the photographer, “but this time smile.”

Like Blow–Up seen from the other side of the camera, the female model grapples with the deceptive nature of photographic images, well aware of advertising’s false promises. In a collapsing world, do luxury goods and status symbols still have meaning? When official loudspeakers announce that people can actually live without “superfluous objects” and all you need to start a new life is a suitcase small enough to carry onto a plane? The anti-consumerism now seems like another random element in a narrative constructed of jumbled ideas, but Fata Morgana‘s themes obviously resonated at the time of its release. Echoes can be seen in films by directors as disparate as , , and Peter Greenaway.

The tone, alternating fatalism and optimism, still feels relevant today. In the end, the professor’s theory proves to be wrong, the London event goes unexplained, but Gim’s valiant struggle to maintain her humanity continues. She keeps walking, leaving the city behind as the camera moves away from her until a green field fills the frame.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a wild, disorienting, surreal mash-up of Pop Art, science fiction, thriller, and horror.”–Michael Barrett, Pop Matters (Blu-ray)

Fata Morgana [Blu-ray]

Fata Morgana [Blu-ray]
  • First U.S. Blu-ray release for this 1960’s psychedelic Euro-thriller.
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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: LIVE FREAKY! DIE FREAKY! (2006)

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DIRECTED BY: John Roecker

FEATURING: Voices of Billie Joe Armstrong, Tim Armstrong, Theo Kogan, Kelly Osbourne, Davey Havok, Asia Argento, John Doe, Jane Wiedlin

PLOT: A denizen of a future, post-apocalyptic landscape discovers an account of a narcissistic cult leader and his murderous spree in Hollywood in the latter half of the 20th century. 

Still from Live freaky, die freaky! (2006)

COMMENTS: A line of defense of bad comedians is to complain when they get called on the carpet for telling offensive jokes that punch down. “Don’t be so offended,” they love to say. So it’s not an auspicious start for Live Freaky! Die Freaky! to kick off with a title card that warns us, “Rated X, not for the easily offended.” It’s a litmus test. If you’re in any way put off by what follows, you have no one to blame but your own uncool bleeding heart. Because giving offense is very much the order of the day.

Make no mistake, writer-director Roecker wants so very badly to shock you with his profane irreverence. Live Freaky! is a bouillabaisse of slanderous characterizations, insulting stereotypes, cheeky musical numbers, and puppet gore. It’s a parade of sub-“Davey and Goliath” animations naughtily saying the dirtiest things they can think of, and then winding up covered in blood. Everyone fails every possible variation of the Bechdel test because everyone endlessly boasts about their depraved sex practices (and one character indulges himself even after death). The meet-cute between the film’s lunatic messiah and one of his aspiring acolytes is a lengthy scene of explicit stop-motion doll sex while singing a jaunty music hall tune. It’s the creation of someone who saw Team America and concluded that the way to make that film’s notorious sex scene funnier would be to just do more of it. 

I suppose Live Freaky! is a bold example of not really caring about anything at all. From the moment we see a live-action post-apocalypse vagrant unearth an old copy of Healter Skelter (sic), we’re launched into a looking-glass version of the Charles Manson story where the inexplicably charismatic miscreant may be bad, but at least he’s a man of the people. His victims are portrayed as even worse: drug-addled, sex-obsessed, vulgar and dismissive of anyone who isn’t rich or famous like they are. Oh, wait. I’m sorry. Did I say Charles Manson? Of course I meant Charles Hanson. Absolutely nothing to do with that other fellow. In fact, you can tell that the filmmakers have done their due diligence removing any trace of the Manson family’s rampage,  because while the names may all seem familiar, they’ve cleverly replaced every first initial with an H. Yep, this story is about Sharon Hate and her friends Hay and Habigail. Totally different. You can’t possibly sue them. It’s all 3-D chess with these guys.  

The movie openly embraces a punk aesthetic, which is presumably why the voice cast is comprised of several major figures from the punk rock scene, led by Green Day front man Billie Joe Armstrong essaying Charlie through what feels like a Redd Foxx impression. He’s joined by Tim Armstrong (no relation) from Rancid, John Doe of X, plus friends from Good Charlotte, AFI, Blink-182, Tiger Army, White Zombie, Lunachicks, and the Transplants. (Also Jane Wiedlin of The Go-Go’s, which is just depressing.) And then they hand this collection of punk all-stars a series of lame songs without an ounce of punk in them. And aside from their punk bonafides, the other thing cast all have in common is that none of them can act. Every line is delivered as if it was the only take of a script received five minutes before recording. The closest thing we have to a professional actor, Ozzy Osbourne’s daughter Kelly, plays her grotesquely vain socialite with the same snooty, over-enunciated whine throughout. The best analogy for the cast I can think of is a bunch of friends who come over to help you move. Everyone’s there to lend a hand, but they’re really just there for the pizza.

This kind of thing is tolerable in a show like, say, South Park because the creators are such committed libertarians. Yes, they’re bomb-throwers, but their targets are usually the high and mighty, the terminally humorless, and blinkered illogicians. There’s a brief glimmer of satire in Live Freaky! in a 20-second scene where the prosecuting attorney bemoans the degeneracy of Charlie and his crew, and then celebrates all the money he’s going to make off the book he’s writing about the case. But that’s it. Who is the movie really out to take down? Hollywood, maybe, although not any Hollywood that bears relation to life as lived by actual human beings. The rich? They’re not so much worse than the murderous, dumpster-diving poor. No, there’s no real target here, except the audience. Basically, the filmmakers are just hoping someone will take offense. They want the glory of having ruined someone else’s day. Well, mission accomplished.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This 2003 [sic] film is a weird concept, done in a weird way and done with a weird sensibility.  Nothing about this feels normal… To quote a great man, ‘This movie sucks!'”– Alec Pridgen, Mondo Bizarro

(This movie was nominated for review by Sam, who called it “Pretty terrible, but incredibly weird!” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Live Freaky Die Freaky

Live Freaky Die Freaky
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