Found Laying Around the Shop

Monday, August 31, 2020

Coming home is terrible, whether the dog licks your face or not. Coming home is terribly lonely, whether you have a wife or just a wife shaped loneliness waiting for you.

“Other animals live in the present. Humans cannot, so they invented hope.”

 

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman) is a comedy about a YOUNG WOMAN meeting her boyfriend’s parents. Okay, but the movie itself is really a dance between:

·      The interior sadness of the JANITOR

·      His object of hope, the young woman

   And it is through the process of simultaneously depicting these two ideas as art in which we move through a narrative relentlessly shifting its perspective instinctively and intellectually. The fun comes from how neither of these two inventions are straightforward. And thus, we get to explore this fictionalized psyche thinking of ending things for our own edification as audience.

 

   Maybe the best symbol of this quality can be seen as represented by the two Oreo Brrrs (a frozen treat akin to the Dairy Queen Blizzard). Early on as the couple are driving, they pass a billboard advertising the Tulsey Town ice cream stand. A disembodied voice says, “Come, join me.” The voice is creepy. One meaning that could be read into this is that of being lured into obtaining something through the suggestive thought implanted by advertising, here being code for a romantic relationship.

   Much later when JAKE decides to indulge in stopping for a Brrr, along with the young woman, he suddenly realizes he doesn’t even want it. More than that, now as he drives it starts to melt and he has to stop somewhere and get rid of it. Then he becomes distraught over thinking about how it’ll leave a sticky residue, nothing can calm him until he disposes of the dessert.

   In the dumpster where Jake’s thrown away his and the young woman’s Brrrs, there’s a shot of the two discarded confections still full, atop a heap of nothing but other empty Brrr cups. This image left me wondering what it meant long after the movie was over. Sure, there’s the link to nostalgia that comes with the Tulsey Town song, like this’s Jake’s “rosebud.” But that seems too easy. It’s more like the hope the Janitor’s invested in finding love with the right woman, then at the end of his life finally being disgusted by that desire, painfully desperate to rid himself of it and any trace of it entirely.

 

   I’m Thinking of Ending Things is so full of endlessly enjoyable self-reflexive occurrences. And these are what are so effective at defining its artistic tone. Take the pigs that died from being underfed. The way Jake describes it, the neglect happened thoughtlessly. Like it’s at the same time horrific and inevitable. And there’s a poignancy to the way he refers to both of the pigs being eaten alive by maggots. He doesn’t say how many pigs there were, but “both” seems to imply two—as in a couple. 

 

   Somehow this film is still always a comedy. Kaufman’s novel Antkind (published last month) is full of comic wordplay, including several different vaudeville acts and their routines. And though his screenplays have often played around with this kind of schtick, Antkind and now I’m Thinking of Ending Things present a phase where it’s used more often, and consistently.

   Also amped up more in Antkind and the as yet unfilmed Frank or Francis screenplay is Kaufman’s satirical contempt for Hollywood, which comprises a significant part of the comedy in I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Although on a lighter note, one comedic vignette that soars particularly high is when the young woman suddenly performs as both Gena Rowlands’ MABEL LONGHETTI (aided by a cigarette she smokes that appears out of nowhere) and recites by rote the infamous scathing Pauline Kael review of Rowlands performance of that role at the same time. 

   I don’t have any evidence to support this but, my final point I’ll end with is that I think the young woman met the janitor when he was around twenty, at the bar on trivia night. He asked for her number and she gave it to him. He called her and asked her out. And he never saw or heard from her again.




8/29/2020 Landmark Midtown Art Cinema

Atlanta, GA

Sunday, August 30, 2020

Hello, San Dimas

 Sure, they’re a couple of idiots, but yet again their quest out does itself and challenges the duo with an adventure worthy of getting back in the phonebooth one more time.

   Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020, Dean Parisot) knows how to deliver jokes that are familiar to their brand without feeling stale. It’s a case where embracing the formula is the right thing to do. 

   What gives the film legs is having a dual-narrative. In the B-story we get a reboot where their two daughters time travel on a mission that depends on them seeking the help of an assortment of historical figures from different time periods. The actress who plays BILLIE steals the movie with her dead-on physical impersonation of Keanu’s snarls, head weaving, and incredulous shoulder posturing, complete with matching hairdo. The A-story is a sequel where Bill and Ted encounter an entirely new set of conflicts.

 

   Bill & Ted Face the Music is carefree because it’s not ashamed of being a Hollywood spectacle that’s got heart (and in the right place). And it’s also got a lean running time that’s continuously spoken aloud to remind us exactly how many minutes are left in the move, as displayed by a stopwatch inherited from Rufus.



8/28/2020 NCG Cinemas 

Brookhaven, GA

Saturday, August 29, 2020

Submitted for the approval of the midnight society:

The New Mutants (2020, Josh Boone) is a YA horror movie constructed in a way that unifies the collective inner conflicts of its plural protagonist by making the right aesthetic choices.

 

   The inner conflict is the darkness caused by fear, shame, and self-destruction. And for each of the teens there is a trauma from their past that refuses to let go of them, which results in they’re being institutionalized together—providing the depressing premise which is The New Mutants. But not only am I in luck finding this gem of depression, it also has a minimalist quality going for it.

   The whole movie takes place in this giant spooky building that looks like it could be a hundred years old. But other than the five subjects being treated here and their doctor, there’s no one else around except the occasional orderly. We aren’t told hardly anything about this place like where it’s located or who runs it. And the subjects don’t have to do schoolwork. All they do is spend their time in a rec room where a TV runs a never-ending marathon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

 

   Among the characters I find the most compelling are the ones whose sexuality plays some kind of role in their lives. First there’s the arrogant mimbo whose instincts for getting laid catch a hitch due to his arousal arousing his mutant power of human torching to manifest, which isn’t all that unique or original. But really, it’s the Irish teen lesbian who’s cute and sweet yet happens to have the mutant power of being a dog—keen sense of smell, fur, clawing and biting. And the dog girl’s trauma has something to do with her like being attacked by a Catholic priest, but she’s still Catholic. And, ILLYANA RASPUTIN...

 

   The New Mutants does well in focusing on these youngsters isolated and alone in the world who are incarcerated in this oppressive institution only to be stuck with each other, not in a peer group but only to find a different form of isolation and loneliness. It’s all an effective form of representing hormones, puberty and high school.




 

8/27/2020 AMC Phipps Plaza 14

Atlanta, GA

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Gamera (1995)

Blue skies and fire.  

























Directed by Shusuke Kaneko.

Sunday, August 02, 2020

DISCOVERING DRAMATIC DEVICES no. 1

A device unique to Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan calmly expounding on the fate of someone close to him (or all of humanity) from an omniscient point of view in which he transcends time, is something I don't think I've seen done anywhere else.
   That is until the other day, after I watched 20th Century Women (2016, Mike Mills). Throughout that film there are scenes where a character talks about the fate of one of the other characters, mentioning events that will not occur until the end of their lives, while the narrative itself remains rooted in the present. And coincidentally Billy Crudup turns up in a supporting role in 20th Century Women too.