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Capsules

CAPSULE: FREAKS VS. THE REICH (2021)

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AKA Freaks Out

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Freaks vs. the Reich is currently available for VOD rental.

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DIRECTED BY: Gabriele Mainetti

FEATURING: Aurora Giovinazzo, Claudio Santamaria, Pietro Castellitto, Giancarlo Martini, Franz Rogowski

PLOT: In 1943 Nazi-occupied Rome, Matilde, Fulvio, Cencio, and Mario are the stars of the Half-Penny Circus; Franz, a Nazi with oracular abilities, wishes to get all twelve of his fingers on the troupe of freaks in the hopes of averting disaster for the Reich.

Still from Freaks vs. the Reich (2021)

COMMENTS: In a world saturated with superheroes, I say, “bring on the Super Freaks.” Gabriele Mainetti’s sophomore feature has rip-rollicking adventure, charming humor, concerts, explosions, Nazis, swarms of bugs, and—and everything I’d be looking for in a big-screen period piece. Having been lucky enough to catch this at Fantasia last year, it nearly pained me not to treat it with the full writeup it deserves. My fond recollections of this film are best captured with my remarks jotted down immediately following the screening:

“Come one, come all, to the Half-Penny Circus. Witness the aerial insect artistry of Cencio the albino! Giggle at the pratfalls of Mario the magnetic clown! Behold the raw strength—and ample fur—of Man-Beast Fulvio! And delight in the electrifying acrobatic artistry of Matilde, who powers light bulbs with the touch of her fingers!”

Freaks Out deftly walks a thin tight-rope while simultaneously pulling off an impressive hat trick (I shall now dispense with the carnival metaphors). Mainetti quite obviously, and quite unashamedly, dips into several buckets of influence: superheroes, Nazi baddies, buddy comedies, and action movie razzle-dazzle. These are all reliable, if perhaps well-worn, sources, but the alchemical combination makes the concoction shine. Just in the opening scene featuring the Half-Penny Circus, we witness whimsy, true magic—and a shell-blast of stark, wartime realism as the performance is interrupted by the surrounding carnage. The four freaks all feel fleshed-out, and fresh, as they follow their mentor-cum-manager through the blasted streets and hillsides of Rome under Nazi occupation.

But the coup de grâce comes, as it so often does, from the villain:  mild-mannered, six-fingered, future-glimpsin’, ether-huffin’ Nazi Franz, who wants to save the Fatherland while simultaneously being denigrated by his countrymen’s allegorical stand-in, his older brother. Rogowski brings gravitas, tenderness (the performance of Radiohead’s “Creep” by twelve-fingered piano-man is an early show-stopper), frustration, machination, and, against all the odds, sympathy to his performance. In one scene Franz liquidates “sub-standard” freaks, and in another mutilates his body to conform with the able-ist standards of Nazi knuckle-beaks.

I’m repeating myself from before, I realize, but my nostalgia for Freaks Out hit me to a degree I was not anticipating. That in mind, I will leave you with some words of advice, and hearty request. Stand by your friends, say “No!” to Nazis, and find the time to watch Freaks Out on the biggest screen and through the biggest speakers you can find. Mainetti has obviously set this troupe up as a franchise, so get the word out about Freaks Out. I want to see them smash the Nazis again. (And again…)

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A strange and complex muddling of X-Men and The Shape of Water, with an abundance of Nazi’s, Freaks Out will have you crying, laughing, wincing, and smiling as it tells its epic story of belonging and embracing your weirdness.”–Kat Hughes, The Hollywood News (festival screening)

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SMOKING CAUSES COUGHING (2022)

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Fumer fait tousser

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Smoking Causes Coughing is currently available for VOD rental.

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Gilles Lellouche, , Jean-Pascal Zadi, Oulaya Amamra, Vincent Lacoste, voice of

PLOT: A Power Rangers-like group of heroes goes on a team building retreat and tells campfire stories; will the world end before they can solve their issues?

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: A group of avengers named the Tobacco Force destroys their enemies by shooting them with smoke and giving them cancer. A large fish tells a story about a young man who, after being involved in an industrial shredder accident, becomes a pair of lips in a pail of gore. For these and many more absurd instances, Smoking Causes Coughing could be a shoo-in for Apocryphal status.

COMMENTS:  Quentin Dupieux’s newest film, Smoking Causes Coughing, is superficially about the Tobacco Force, the “coolest avengers in the world,” according to one of their in-film fans. Power Rangers meets Danger 5, the Tobacco Force regularly saves the world from rubber-suited monsters. Recently, however, they have been having problems with insincerity and individualism. To come together as a team before meeting their ultimate nemesis, Lézardin, their boss (a rat puppet who constantly drools green slime) assigns them to a team-building retreat. There they tell stories around a campfire, and the movie becomes an anthology, returning to the Tobacco Force between stories.

As the team sits around the fire, a young girl appears and tells a story. Later one of them catches a barracuda in the lake and, yes, the barracuda tells a story. The stories are the highlight of the movie. They are inventive, twisted, existential jokes. They are also often gory.

Dupieux does not stray from his absurdist existentialism. For instance, in the first story a woman puts on a “Thinking Helmet” that promises to purify the mind. A few minutes later we are in a deadpan slasher, as if to say that if a person knows the truth, they will not be able to abide the way things are.

The pace throughout is steady but not quick. Scenes that seem too long or even pointless add to the sense of ennui and to questioning life in general. Some elements are completely unexpected—absurd, silly, and sometimes mind-boggling.

Their boss, the Chief, is the only puppet in the film; he would feel right at home in ’s Meet the Feebles. He’s utterly disgusting and also unbearably attractive to every woman in the movie. Perhaps a comment on power? Perhaps simple absurdity.

This movie is not going to change anyone’s mind about Quentin Dupieux. If you enjoyed his previous films, you’ll likely enjoy this one. If you didn’t, well… you get the point. But if you haven’t seen anything by him, and you’ve made it this far into this review, then maybe you’ll dig it. It isn’t revelatory; it’s just an existential absurdist good time.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Trying to explain ‘Smoking Causes Coughing’ is like recounting a dream: The person listening might not care, and it might not mean anything to them, but it leaves a weirdly unforgettable impression on the spectator.”–Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire (contemporaneous)

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE: JUSTICE IS GRAY (2021)

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‘s Justice League: Justice Is Gray (2021) is four-hours (!) of sullen macho masturbation that drains away whaever minuscule color and joy were left in the DC deities. The title is half-apt; look elsewhere for justice, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more epically gray landscape of Fascistic mediocrity.  While the Snyder/Whedon Justice League (2017) was an understandably lopsided affair, it at least had a few affecting moments.

Zack Snyders Justice League: Justice is Gray (2021)Like the Mango Mussolini cult, Snyder’s fan base heaps their rabid obsessions on the least deserving object of adulation. While HBO Max’s Justice League had strong viewership on its premiere, it eventually got knocked out of the public consciousness when the ape and lizard started strutting their stuff. In a 2 plus 2 equals eight moment, a faction of Snyder disciples made like QAnon (or like Snyder’s Taliban, or Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door—take your pick) to review bomb Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) on IMDB, revealing their barrel-dwelling lunacy. Snyder himself came out of his narcissistic closet, mantling his best Dotard impersonation, thanking his believers for sharing the dream.

Snyder epitomizes macho movie-making for low-demanding pubescents. There’s nothing authentically masculine or aesthetically competent in his Triumph of the Will for the funny papers. Some critics have heaped praise on it, pontificating about its better sense of depth. No, that’s merely excessive exposition from characters that have gone from symbolic (and vulnerable) heroes of justice to two-dimensional combatants, straight out of a soulless Transformer movie, who will eventually team up against a big black shiny villain named Darkseid (Ray Porter) who makes for one of the most personality-bankrupted antagonists in all of cinema.

Wonder Woman () is portrayed in sharp contrast to her character in ‘ films (and although WW 84 is flawed, it’s considerably better than this excrement). She’s merely a video byte here and the only time she manages to emit any light is when she kills (yup, she kills).

The Flash (, who pales next to Grant Guston) provides the 7th grade humor. Aquaman (Jason Momoa) provides the yawn-inducing macho one-liners, variations of quips we’ve heard in hundreds of action pics. Batman (Ben Affleck, delivering a white trash portrayal of the Dark Knight, repeatedly seen riding a horse) channels Terminator‘s talk of “the looming war” in a banal landscape that literally zaps out all the color that Whedon infused into it. Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds, as a digital blob) compete with Darkseid for dullest characterizations. Lois Lane (Amy Adams) waxes wide-eyed, hand-wringing desperation awaiting the resurrection of Superman (Henry Cavill). One would think a literal resurrection would be accompanied by bells, whistles, and a jubilee. Nope. You see, these mother boxes… just don’t ask.

Our “heroes” (i.e., nationalist deities), step down from a Nintendo Mount Rushmore and stand in the drab, ashen horizon. Checking the watch here, one might be thankful for the finale. Nope. That was just a teaser, because there’s epilogues galore to come, all of which practically announce the sequels (which apparently are not not going to happen and/or will be Hack Snyderless).

This four-hour masturbation orgy doesn’t offer anything vital that we didn’t receive in its 2017 forerunner. That one was no great shakes, but it’s tolerable compared to this sadomasochism dictated by mob rule. While the Snyder cultists didn’t physically storm the Capitol, they did storm the studio demanding their prophet the chance to spew his unabridged sermon. Now, they’re toxically flooding social media demanding a “restoration of the Snyderverse.” You can’t make this shit up.

Apocryphally Weird, Canonically Weird (The List)

12*. JESUS SHOWS YOU THE WAY TO THE HIGHWAY (2019)

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“I think we’re living in a world that in fifty years we’re not going to recognize, because now we produce real objects. But with augmented reality… we’re going to transform the world.” -Miguel Llansó

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DIRECTED BY: Miguel Llansó

FEATURING: Daniel Tadesse, Guillermo Llansó, Gerda-Annette Allikas, Solomon Tashe,  Lauri Lagle

PLOT: Agents D.T. Gagano and Palmer Eldritch must enter the CIA-created alternate reality, “PsychoBook”, in order to investigate a sentient computer virus, Soviet Union. Abandoned within the virtual reality, Gagano finds himself in _Beta Ethiopia, where strongman/president/superhero-villain BatFro conspires with Soviet Union to distribute a VR byproduct known as “the substance.” Gagano’s reality-side fiancée, who hopes to open a kick-boxing academy, must now live with the prospect of him being trapped in a portable television display.

BACKGROUND:

  • An Estonian computer museum provided inspiration for the hardware aethestic in Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway, but the machines on screen were mostly Apple products from the early 1990s.
  • Solomon Tashe,  who plays the African strongman dictator “Batfro,” , is a much-loved Ethiopian media personality.
  • The unusual name “Mister Sophistication” was lifted from John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. However, like other characters in Llansó’s films, he was based on a regular at the Club Juventus, a gathering spot in Addis Ababa for Italian ex-pats and other larger-than-life clientèle.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Take your pick. Perhaps it’s stop-motion Richard Pryor and Robert Redford investigating a house infiltrated by a computer virus assassin. Perhaps it’s the “Jiminy Cricket” CIA AI spouting knee-high advice to Agents Gagano and Eldritch. And perhaps it’s the melodramatic conversation between a super-sweetie BBW kick-boxer and her television-bound lover. For the record, however, the official “Indelible Image” is cross-dressing super-spy, Captain Lagucci, sprinting off a roof to save a portable television. Much like Miguel Llansó, Lagucci just… runs with it.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Coked-up Batfro to the rescue!; CIA Man trapped in a TV

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Llansó manages to make an “anything and everything” approach to imagery, symbolism, dialogue, and scenario gel into a unified whole. Obviously the plot for JSYtWttH is bonkers, and that’d be enough, but its mountain of antiquated tech, dizzying opening credits, vibrant colors, bug aliens, MIT conspiracizing, Cold War derring-do, and… You get the picture; just about everything in this movie makes it weird.

Trailer for Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway

COMMENTS: “Loading. Please wait.” Not a typical beginning for a Continue reading 12*. JESUS SHOWS YOU THE WAY TO THE HIGHWAY (2019) →

Capsules, Channel 366

CHANNEL 366: WANDAVISION (2021)

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DIRECTED BY: Matt Shakman

FEATURING: Elizabeth Olsen, , Kathryn Hahn, , Randall Park,

PLOT: Sorceress Wanda Maximoff and her husband, the strong and flight-capable synthezoid Vision, settle down in the idyllic burg of Westview. However, their peace and comfort are regularly disrupted by nosy neighbors who are constantly seconds away from discovering their secret, outside forces threatening their safety, and the fact that their reality is constantly changing to reflect the evolution of the American situation comedy over several decades.

Still from WandaVision,(2021)

 COMMENTS: For their debut on the Disney+ streaming service, the bigwigs at Marvel Studios bypass their usual flights-and-punches formula in favor of parody, satire, and psychological paranoia. “WandaVision” turns the mystery of what is happening to our protagonists on its head by filtering the drama through the pastiche of laugh-tracked comical antics. So it’s not quite what you might expect from the box office wizards at Marvel. On the other hand, it’s still mainstream entertainment, and the patient will soon be rewarded with explanations for all that transpires.

When last seen on the big screen, Wanda Maximoff (AKA Scarlet Witch) was doing battle with purple mega-Malthusian Thanos, while Vision was dead at selfsame villain’s hands. For those who have diligently followed the Marvel Cinematic Universe through 24-or-so big screen adventures, the sight of the pair crossing the threshold as (1) married, (2) very much alive, and (3) stepping onto the set of an ersatz “Dick van Dyke Show” must surely provoke a cocked eyebrow.

But if you’ve been paying any attention at all, you’ve noticed that part of Marvel’s success has derived from its willingness to borrow beats and tropes from other genres to keep the overall superhero vibe fresh. You’re as likely to get touches of 70s paranoid thriller (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) as you are an 80s macho-buddy flick (Thor: Ragnarok). Sometimes the films even shift tone within their own running time (see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’s lurch from heist comedy to haunted requiem). So the left-turn into sitcom territory is not totally off-brand.

Considering that they’ve been reduced to mere cameos amidst the cinematic cavalcade of superheroes, Olsen and Bettany seem to relish finally getting the spotlight to themselves for a little bit. Their chemistry, teased out in stolen moments in the big-screen omnibus, is genuine, and if their transformation into broad comedians still feels awkward, it’s not for lack of trying. The same Vision who triumphantly hoisted Thor’s hammer in the cinema is here reduced to belting out “Yakety Yak” as a wild distraction—but the spirit says to just go with it.

That’s surely why “WandaVision” is on our radar. It feels wrong. These characters shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing, these comedic styles should not be on our TV screens in the 21st century, and for three episodes, the show resolutely refuses to explain just what the heck is going on. Of course, this puzzle box is part of what draws viewers here in the first place. Something strange is going on is Heroville, and we’re gonna try and figure out what.

And sure enough, episode 4 begins to unpack the mystery, as agents from the “real world” try to understand the mysterious goings-on. It’s hardly a coincidence that FBI agent Jimmy Woo is scribbling down the very questions that are in our own heads: “Why hexagonal shape? Why sitcoms? Same time & space? Is Vision alive?” For any viewers shaking their heads and despairing at the many unanswered questions, the plot cops are here to sort things out.

“WandaVision” represents an interesting attempt to incorporate some different flavors into the Marvel mix. Director Shakman and creator Jac Schaeffer fully commit to their odd premise, with credit sequences, theme songs, and commercial breaks to match each new setting. (In particular, episode 5 ends in a wild twist that manages to riff on sitcom tropes and inside-baseball Hollywood at the same time.) In other words, it’s weird and it knows it. But the show also wants to reassure you that everything’s going to make sense in the end; it’s weird for a reason. When you’re a multibillion dollar content factory, you probably don’t want to leave that kind of thing to chance.

Roger Ebert famously summarized the shortcomings of 2010, the belated sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, by quoting the verse of e. e. cummings: “I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance”. Similarly, “WandaVision” soars when gleefully vivisecting expectations for a comic book adventure series, but the needs of the franchise, and the demands of mainstream entertainment, keep it firmly tethered to the ground.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The best parts of the first three episodes are when WandaVision unapologetically leans into its weirdness… the more unexplained moments the show throws at us, and the more it pushes up against what feels like horror, the more it allows the sitcom device to really hammer home its uncanny artificiality. The result is that the sitcom beats feel even stranger, maybe even more menacing — in a way that goes beyond “these characters sure are acting unnaturally.” It makes you realize the intense desperation for these characters to be “normal,” and the tragedy that “normal” is the one thing they’ll never be able to be. When the characters sink back into their comedic shtick, then, it feels even more unnerving.” – Alex Abad-Santos, Vox