The Lunch Movie

Friday August 6, 2010 at the Landmark Kendall Sq, Cambridge MA

Written & Directed by Michael Stephenson, starring George Hardy, Claudio Fragasso, Connie Young and Margo Prey.

In 1999 there was no such thing the classic TV series “Galaxy Quest;” the show was invented so that the endearingly hilarious film GALAXY QUEST could exist. Had TROLL 2 not existed, it would have been worth inventing, if only to supply the back-story to BEST WORST MOVIE. TROLL 2 is a goofy fun horror film shot in Utah in 1989 but not released until 1992. The documentary BEST WORST MOVIE examines the making of, vanishing of, and unexpected resurgence of TROLL 2. The film’s voyage to cult status began when HBO aired it in 1993. Possibly the most slowly contagious viral video ever, TROLL 2 spent the next 10+ years growing a following of fans that held parties to screen it on worn VHS copies.

Word of these parties reached Michael Stephenson, who as a child appeared in TROLL 2 as Joshua Waits. Stephenson’s curiosity became two-fold: 1) who were these people who had embraced a movie that was regarded as preferably forgotten even by some of it’s cast and 2) what had become of that cast? BEST WORST MOVIE is Stephenson’s document of his exploration of both these questions. His very fortunate first move was to enlist George Hardy, who had played his father Michael Waits, to help him track down the rest of the TROLL 2 cast. George Hardy is a man too friendly, too funny, too decent, too all-around positive for fiction. If BEST WORST MOVIE were a fictitious lampoon of cult status like GALAXY QUEST, some development exec dork in a suit would have insisted Mr. Hardy be a secret alcoholic with a terrible mystery in his past to give him some lazy version of “depth.” But this is real life, and in real life and in BEST WORST MOVIE, even George Hardy’s ex-wife has only good things to say about him. The great joy of BEST WORST MOVIE is watching the semi father and son team of Stephenson and Hardy retrace their family tree. What I have given you here is prologue, plus a hint of who the principle characters are now — I am reluctant to say any more, other than that their journey is funny, sad and always intriguing. It is a trip worth taking for anyone who has ever opposed a chorus of disapproval to champion a movie, actor, singer, song, painter, building or any other artist or work of art.

With the exception of TROLL 2′s director Claudio Fragasso, everyone in Stephenson’s cast and crew family seems astounded by the recent success of TROLL 2. I read one review of BEST WORST MOVIE that made the interesting point that some ironic hipster audiences these days find it easier to laugh at a movie than to truly love it. I agree that this may account for some of the adoration Stephenson and Hardy experience in midnight TROLL 2 screenings across the country, but I think there is something else. TROLL 2 comes from an absurd premise, as does John Carl Buechler’s 1986 film TROLL, but it is a wildly inventive completely off the wall premise. When you watch either of these films, you may not like them, but you sure as hell won’t find yourself saying “I’ve already seen this in That Movie,” or “This is such a rip-off of Fill In The Blank!” No friends, the TROLL films are an unmistakably distinct experience. I submit that this is what GOBLIN-shirt wearing fans line up for; they’d rather see a low budget ridiculously inventive green-goop splatter-fest than a bloated big studio action movie without a prayer for something unique because it was made by the same committee formula as every other “summer tent-pole event” movie.

It could also be suggested that BEST WORST MOVIE benefits heavily from the slowly creeping growth of the ranks of TROLL 2 fans. Some more recent cult films like THE BIG LEBOWSKI and DONNIE DARKO found their core audience so quickly after their under-performing initial theatrical release that there was no time to sit back and take stock of what was reeling in these die-hard fans. As unusual as was the story of TROLL 2, so too is the singular experience at the heart of BEST WORST MOVIE, of this cast and their nearly generational transition with their fans. At the end of this year, I expect there will be no $100M high-octane movie hero whose quest I will have enjoyed rooting for as much as I did Mark and George’s.

Friday, July 30, 2009 at The Brattle Theater, Cambridge MA

Written & Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn, starring Mads Mikkelson and Maarten Stevenson.

I love it when a movie completely subverts my expectations and still gets me to go along for the ride. Considering Refn’s contemporary films, his urgent PUSHER trilogy and last year’s kinetic BRONSON, I expected VALHALLA RISING to be an explosively violent medieval epic. Bludgeonings, beheadings and the most nonchalantly delivered evisceration I’ve ever witnessed are all on the menu — albeit in very controlled portions. In between the skull crushings are stretches of physical and spiritual quest that have been broken up into six chapters: Wrath, Silent Warrior, Men Of God, and … I’ll spare you the spoiler of revealing more of the chapter titles. Suffice it to say that if you are unfamiliar with Refn’s character driven films, and stumble in expecting THE 13th WARRIOR or CLASH OF THE TITANS, you will be disappointed.

VALHALLA RISING follows a one-eyed savage fighter whom we first meet being dragged in chains across windswept barrens. The fighter is mute, but capable of fleeting glimpses of his near future; we never learn whether his silence is by choice or inability to speak. His keepers bet on his skill with annihilating the champion in each village they pass through. The fighter eventually slips his bonds and slays his keepers, sparing only a young boy named Are who had given him food and water during his long march. Are repays the favor by christening the fighter, imaginatively enough, One-Eye.

One-Eye and Are soon find themselves in the company of Christian Vikings intent on a crusade to Jerusalem. The Vikings have conflicting reasons for their crusade, but One-Eye’s second sight suggests that he belongs on this quest. When the Vikings’ ship becomes lost at sea, they wonder if they are headed for Hell rather than The Holy Land, and whether Are or One-Eye is the cause of their misfortune.

VALHALLA RISING, both in style and substance, questions the nature of spiritual awakening. Rejecting the operatic scores of Hollywood medieval epics, Refn uses a creeping and droning symphony of dread, broken more often by unnerving silence than screaming combat. We are not following heroes; this expedition is as lost spiritually as it is geographically. Each of the Vikings falls short of their mission, some seeking personal glory and others fortune. None are on this crusade for personal salvation or the glory of God, begging whether it is One Eye who has led them to Hell or these false prophets who have created their own damnation. VALHALLA RISING underscores the damage that weak men do to the faith of innocents, and the strength of courageous men to transcend the manipulations of cowards.

Tuesday, April 20 at the Kendall Sq. Cinema, Cambridge, MA.

Directed by Nash Edgerton, starring David Roberts, Claire van der Boom, Anthony Hayes and Joel Edgerton.

If you put a gun to my head and gave me three seconds to tell you what my favorite film genre is, I’d probably say Film Noir. I was raised on some glorious science fiction and horror movies. I’ve given many hours to my affection for westerns and war movies. I’ve even developed an appreciation for a precious few romances and romantic comedies. But film noir, via THE MALTESE FALCON, was the genre that first bonded me with my father. This latest tale of the boulevard of broken dreams comes to us from Syndey, Australia.

The Edgerton Bros story concerns two staples of classic noir: an affair between married partners and a bag of money. Raymond and Carla are both married to other people, and both dream of running away with each other. When Carla spies her husband Greg hiding a small fortune in a duffel, she does not waste any time figuring out where or how he got it, she only sees an opportunity to put hers and Raymond’s dream into action. An effort to cover the adulterers’ tracks so they can blow town with Greg’s cash results in an accidental murder. The murder hatches scams on top of schemes, threats on top of blackmail, and creeping suspicion among the residents of a suburban lakeside community.

Many a noir has been knocked from the classic shelf by characters making completely ridiculous decisions for the sole purpose of pushing the story in a direction it did not want to go. THE SQUARE is all the more compelling because George and Carla, and everyone in their web, avoid those decisions. While your idea of a perfect murder may not include their plan, it is important to remember that murder was never part of their plan, it was an unintended consequence. From there, every move they make is reasonable within the context of desperate people running scared. You don’t notice the great feeling of buying a story hook-line-sinker as much as you’d notice the jarring shake of a movie that jolts you back to reality with an unbelievable twist. The Edgerton’s exemplary cast hits every paranoid note in the their air-tight script.

THE SQUARE has another feature that sets it above the vast majority of suspense thrillers, an element lacking in most movies of any genre, which is the possibility of chance. Suspense is destroyed in lesser movies once you realize that everything happens by someone’s design. Everything. One character or another is always in control. As soon as you know what each character wants, you can guess what will happen next, and the rest of the movie becomes a clock winding down to what you knew would happen from 10 minutes in. THE SQUARE makes use of my personal favorite device for throwing a monkey in this wrench: weather.

Rain is the uncontrollable element that drives THE SQUARE into directions no character could have taken it. Rain is a 100% believable wild card because everyone in the audience can relate to having it ruin their best-laid plans. If it sounds like I am making too much of this, go back and watch BODY HEAT and imagine it without the sweltering humid heat wave. Kenneth Branagh and Clint Eastwood are masters of deploying weather in their films. Other random occurrences push Raymond and Carla together, and pull them apart, but rain is so pervasive that nature itself almost becomes a character. If THE SQUARE is any evidence, Noir remains alive and well to bond future generations of movie nerds.

Saturday February 27, 2010 at the AMC Boston Common.

Directed by Breck Eisner, executive produced by George A. Romero, starring Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson and Danielle Panabaker, and featuring a quietly menacing score by Mark Isham.

I had high hopes for THE CRAZIES, thanks to some solid trailers and TV commercials, and the fact that George A. Romero had signed on to exec produce this remake of his 1973 film. A few days before I saw it my expectations were somewhat lowered by a few critics, mostly those of the desperately-seeking-nerd-credibility variety, who stand ever ready to berate a remake. You know these folks; they’re a splinter group of the sort of moviegoers who should have “the book was better!” stamped on their forehead.

I am here to tell you this my friends: if you like a smart horror film, Breck Eisner’s THE CRAZIES is worth your 101 minutes. Not to take anything away from Romero’s movie; it was rip-roaring fun and made some sharp comments on the times, just as he has consistently done with his DEAD series. What immediately distinguishes Romero-remakes like Zac Snyder’s DAWN OF THE DEAD and Eisner’s CRAZIES from their sources are the remakes’ very strong casts. Actors who work hard to sell the fear contribute vividly to the suspension of disbelief. Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell as a husband and wife / sheriff and doctor team were enough to get me in the theater. The happy surprise was Joe Anderson, whom I thought I’d never seen before, until IMDB reminded me that he had elevated THE RUINS from goofy fun to an intense experience. Anderson turns Olyphant’s unpredictable wild card of a deputy from a character who could have simply been a cliche monkey in the wrench into a very believable short-tempered man under pressure.

THE CRAZIES has another strength that I have not seen addressed in any reviews I’ve read, positive or negative. Proper credit must be given to this film for responding to the current social-political climate just as Romero did. Polling data in the past few years has shown that, while many Americans are weary of Congress and national government, we are more secure with our state government, and most secure with our local government. We perceive those geographically closest to us as having our best interests at heart.

We see this first level of detachment from the community when Olyphant warns the mayor that something is amiss. The sheriff drives far out of town to the mayor’s home, and finds the mayor lounging beside a swimming pool at what seems to be the only home in town build in the last forty years, comfortably ignoring three deaths that have rocked his town. The heroes of Romero’s film are local civilians, with the military receiving considerable screen time as the villains. The heros of Eisner’s film are local pillars of the community, their town doctor and local law enforcement. While the military remains a villain, they are ominously less present here. Satellite images remind us that our heroes are being watched and have nowhere to run. Eisner gives us the additional villain of the worst among civilians: looters who turn on their own neighbors.

The stock in trade of the average horror movie is a collection of loud and gory set pieces, and THE CRAZIES does not want for creativity in this area. Lesser movies fill the space between these trailer-ready moments with bland set-up and blatant exposition. THE CRAZIES fills those same moments with the steadily paced creeping dread that the worst has already happened, there is no escape, and all that is left is to grow eyes in the back of your head and trust no one. This is post-Patriot Act, post-Hurricane Katrina paranoia at its most lost and desperate.

Friday December 4, 2009 at the Landmark Kendall Sq. Cinema, Cambridge, MA

Directed by Werner Herzog, starring Nicholas Cage, Eva Mendes, Xzibit, Brad Dourif, Fairuza Balk and Vondie Curtis Hall.

I experienced some trepidation before seeing Werner Herzog’s … what shall we call it? Definitely not a sequel to Abel Ferrara’s BAD LIEUTENANT (1992), nor by Herzog’s account is it a remake, if only because he has never seen the earlier film. The term “re-imagining” has been batted around too often in the last decade, but that is what I was expected, possibly what I feared. What I was hoping for, and very nearly got, was a pure Herzog film.

The IMDB message boards for both Herzog’s and Ferrara’s versions offer multiple explanations of how this current film came to have the phrase “Bad Lieutenant” in the title. Most are probably false, and all are irrelevant. Had Herzog released his film as “Port of Call – New Orleans,” critics still would have mentioned Ferrara’s “Lieutenant” in their reviews, if only because both concern detectives addicted to drugs and gambling. Beyond that, they have little in common. Ferrara’s film ponders the Catholic doctrine of Forgiveness by challenging the audience with reprehensible characters on both sides of the law. It is vulgar and gritty and it makes you want to shower with bleach after you’ve seen it.

Herzog’s “Lieutenant” works more as a lampoon of the sort of film I was afraid this might turn out to be, with Nicholas Cage and the rest of a solid cast very much in on the gag. While investigating the murder of a family of Senegalese immigrants, the police come up with a list of suspects including a gangster named “G.” My eyes almost rolled out of my head when I heard this cliche, until Cage seemed to mirror my reaction as he briefed fellow officers. Was Lt. Terry McDonagh mocking G’s unoriginal nickname, or were Cage and Herzog mocking the conventions of a tired genre? I suspected the latter when McDonagh interrogates and elderly woman in a hilariously political incorrect riff on that traditional scene, but the ending really confirmed it for me. *** Spoiler Alert *** skip to the next paragraph if you don’t want part of the end ruined: the last time we see the police station, the scene is staged like a blatant parody of cop shows, with all the loose strands happily tied up with everything but a freeze-framed high 5.

Entertaining though this may be, it does not make for a pure Herzog movie. What does make it a pure Herzog movie, and what seems to have alienated many who prefer their cop movies from the “Lethal Weapon 4″ mold, is his signature use of animals to reflect the randomness of nature and living. From a snake swimming through a flooded prison and a traffic accident caused by an alligator to a pair of iguanas whom only McDonagh can see, animals once again become symbols to be pondered and debated by nerds who love Herzog, or ignored and derided by those who prefer their movies literal and their morality messages spoon fed.

Maybe BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL – NEW ORLEANS should not have been called BAD LIEUTENANT, it’s mystery being so different from the earlier film. Maybe it should have been, since whether you love or hate either, both films turn the standard police drama inside out. But contrary to my initial reservations, there is no mistaking that this is a Werner Herzog movie.

Friday the 13th, 2009 at the Landmark Kendall Sq. Cinema, Cambridge MA.

Directed, written, produced and edited by Emily Kunstler & Sarah Kunstler.

At first glance, nothing seems exceptional about this documentary. Two young women make a movie about their famous father, civil rights attorney William Kunstler. They load it with talking-head interviews and archival news footage, then personalize with Emily’s voice over to string the threads together. At first glance, that is until the Kunstler sisters do something amazing ten minutes in: they lay bare their own disillusionment with their father. Of course they want to love William Kunstler, because he is their father and because he is a respected and storied defense lawyer, but Sarah was born in 1975 and Emily in ’77. By the time they were at an age to understand what William did for a living, he was defending an alleged drug dealer who had shot six police officers in the Bronx, the “wilding gang” in the Central Park Jogger rape case, and the Teflon Don: John Gotti.

Structuring their story this way was a brave gamble that pays off brilliantly. Brave because it risks alienating a large segment of the audience early by focusing first on Kunstler’s less celebrated, tabloid-fodder cases. Brilliant because it sets up parallel stories of Emily and Sarah’s discovery of their father, and of William’s own – for lack of a better word – redemption.

I was aware of William Kunstler’s defense of the Chicago 8 and members of the American Indian Movement. I fully expected to be confronted with these cases within the first few minutes in a misty “look how great our father is/was” montage. Instead Emily tells us that at times she felt punished as a child, unable to leave her family’s Manhattan home. We see protesters on their doorstep screaming that their father “has to go!” This shows faith in the sisters audience that we will hear them out to their conclusion. As we follow Emily and Sarah seeking William’s voice from those who had known the earlier man in his most embattled years, we come to understand that William’s career was built on giving a voice to people that many in society did not want to hear from.

The major criticism I have encountered of DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE is that too many of the interviews are of friends and admirers of William Kunstler. Where are his enemies and detractors, some say? While that is a valid point for a longer film, the Kunstler sisters make yet another impressive decision when they show us Alan Dershowitz (a friend and colleague of their father) recoiling at some of the people Kunstler defended in his later life. It is far more telling that the man who defended Claus Von Bulow says he is uncomfortable with the professional line Kunstler crossed than it is to show prosecutors licking their wounds. In the final analysis, this movie is not so concerned with whether or not you like William Kunstler as it is with asking who among us would retain the courage of our convictions against the challenges that Kunstler met again and again.