2016 Movie a Day: Creep (2014)

"$1,000 for the day. Filming service. Discretion is appreciated." How broke would you have to be in order to drive out to a secluded house in the woods in response to that ad alone, and no other information? Whatever that level of monetary desperation is, Aaron (director Patrick Brice) has reached it. Or, perhaps, he's simply a glorious combination of naive and utterly idiotic. The ad, it turns out, was placed by a man dying of an unspecified illness who would like Aaron to film him wandering around and talking about himself to his unborn son whom he will not live to see. This man, Josef, is played by Mark Duplass as genial, a bit of a doofus, and never anything but insidiously creepy. From the very beginning he's throwing up nothing but red flags; the first thing he wants filmed is "tubby time" with his child, where he immediately strips and jumps into a bathtub where he cleans an imaginary baby and pretends to kiss it on the forehead. Things get worse from there.

The film's concept, that Aaron has taken the wrong job with the wrong weirdo, is a pretty solid- if familiar- setup for a horror film, and it utilizes its found-footage format more effectively than a lot of its contemporaries. The interviewer/interviewee dynamic gives a convenient reason for the camera to be on at all times, and the film's focus on portraying a rambling weirdo keeps the proceedings from devolving into incomprehensible shaky-cam madness. Once or twice near the end, though, Creep still runs up against that ever-present problem; why does Aaron keep filming? More specifically, there are scenes in the latter half of the film where Aaron is filming himself checking the mail, or sleeping, apparently because he knew the footage would be necessary in order to bridge the gap from point A to point B in the audience's mind.

Creep is a two man show; no other characters appear on screen, although we do hear someone claiming to be Josef's sister. It would be best for a prospective audience to adjust their expectations accordingly; this isn't going to be a gory or exciting or even particularly shocking horror movie, this is more like a chamber piece where the depths of one character's madness is slowly explored. Josef, the titular Creep, is the true star of the show, as he keeps up a running monologue of escalating weirdness and has the perfect knack for knowing when to dial it back. He spins a number of stories, and each time he's caught in a lie he has the perfect excuse, retconning the story to fit Aaron's new awareness. It's a trick he pulls a few times, making him seem like matryoshka doll of deceit. 

The film's one true failing is that Aaron is never quite able to keep up with Josef. At just over the halfway point in the movie, Creep switches locations, and we follow Aaron back at home, away from Josef. This duality within the film leaves it feeling very unbalanced, as Aaron is neither as interesting nor as dynamic as Josef. Aaron too often responds with befuddled silence to Josef's madness, which is probably fairly realistic, but means we never get any sense of him as a character. Aaron is incredibly undeveloped, and there's no real sense of tension in seeing him at home receiving video messages and trinkets from Josef. If Aaron had been more developed, or if he had been more involved in the interview process with Josef (if, say, those monologues had been dialogues), the film's tension would have expanded accordingly. As it is, this asymmetry draws attention to just how gimmicky and manufactured the film is. This film was clearly designed as an experiment in how to make a minimalist film, and too much attention is drawn to the film's sense of cleverness.

Still, it was an enjoyable enough ride, and I found it all worthwhile for the final encounter between Josef and Aaron, which gave me a small chuckle at first, and then a larger guffaw as the scene kept going and I realized exactly what it had all been leading up to. It's not hard to imagine that the entire film was put together just for that one nearly-final image.

Final Rating: 3(out of 5)

2016 Movie a Day: Poltergeist (2015)

There's a certain film criticism that goes along the lines of 'there's no real reason for this to exist.' You see it a lot with remakes, where the person making the comment is announcing their displeasure at a beloved property being rehashed. It's an argument I've made a few times myself, but I've recently come to the conclusion that I should stop saying that. Art, even crassly commercial art, doesn't need a reason to exist beyond its own existence. Movies exist to, first and foremost, entertain. I think people forget that sometimes when they gravitate towards challenging arthouse fare, and they begin to look down on more blatantly commercial endeavors. But they forget that even the most glacially paced, abstractly plotted, cerebral thinkpiece is still meant, at least on some level, to entertain you. What people find entertaining is highly subjective, and there's no reason a superhero movie or a horror movie isn't as worthwhile a way to spend 2 hours as your average Fellini film. I've seen the 'why does this exist?' comment in almost every Poltergeist review I looked at, and yet the movie does exist, it's here, so might as well not bother complaining about that basic fact. And so I will talk a bit about the recent remake of Poltergeist, and I will be critical of it, but I will never question it's existence.

That being said, I have to admit that this film did mostly inspire fond recollections of the original film, and never quite improved on the original formula. In fact, as the film went along it seemed to become more and more slavish to the original material. I will say this much; I enjoyed Poltergeist for most of its running time, though I felt it all fell apart in the film's final minutes. A lot of that was the casting; Sam Rockwell is great as the unemployed father who has to downsize his family into a less desirable (though still enviable) neighborhood, but he's great in everything he does, and Jared Harris, in the Zelda Rubinstein roll, though this time he's the host of one of those cheesy cable ghost hunting shows, is always a treat, although most films tend to underuse him, as this one does. But a lot of it also comes down to the tone established by director Gil Kenan, who captures a lightness, and a sense of fun, that is sorely missing from a lot of horror films these days. On the other hand, he also foreshadows the horror elements way too much in the early stretches of the film, during which anxious middle child Kyle Catlett wanders around the family's new suburban home and stares forebodingly at objects and rooms that will become important later on.

As I said, Poltergeist becomes less original as it goes along, and by the middle stretch of the film is basically following the plot of the first film beat for beat, with only minor tweaks. Thought that clown doll in the original was scary? What if this time there were a dozen of them? This wasn't too horrible, actually, and actually had a few fun moments. The scene in which the ghosts finally make themselves known (to the audience if not the family) came with a neat visual, as lightbulbs would turn on and then flare out just as the next one in line started to flare up. Also some of the ghostly white orbs had a neat old school look to them, complete with Spielbergian lens flares. If the film had actually carried on in this manner, I may have enjoyed it more. However, about 15 minutes until the end of the film, everything falls apart.

Throughout the film the big problem with it is that the reasons behind the paranormal activity is a little vague. Sure, the basic premise is the same as the original film;cemetery was moved, but really they just moved the headstones and left the corpses in the ground, which when you think about it makes no sense. Surely the construction of such a large suburban neighborhood would have required a lot of digging, somebody must have noticed those bodies. So I understand why there are pissed off ghosts, the film just never defines what the ghosts can do, why they're doing what they're doing what they're doing, or why they kidnap the youngest daughter. There's some throwaway line about how she can see ghosts, and is at the height of her purity (which comes across as creepier a sentiment than much of the ghostly activity), and yet once the ghosts kidnap her they don't appear to be very interested in her, and she just wanders around the ghost version of their house.

If the film is a bit fuzzy on the specifics of its own mythology, the finale is inexplicably vague and confusing, with the paranormal rules of the film seemingly changing at random with no visible rhyme or reason. Characters  make sudden decisions that apparently help save the day, but it's not clear how or why those decisions work, or even why anybody thought to make them. It's also impossible to determine the fate of many of the major characters, with at least one person appearing to die before the credits roll, only to show up alive and well with no explanation in a post-credits tag. Really, it was surprising how confusing the ending was, and I suspect some studio notes may be to blame. Or perhaps the film was rushed into development before the script could be fixed and they just never figured it out. Whatever the reasons, the ending was enough to drop my rating by half a point or so.

Final Rating: 2.5(out of 5)

2016 Movie a Day: Saulabi

A couple of months ago, while my friend and frequent writing partner Rik (he of the Visiting & Revisiting series, and The Cinema 4 Pylon blog) was up in the LA area for the day, we took a quick trip into Chinatown. It was ostensibly just a little bit of sightseeing as we killed time before a movie we were going to see that night, but not-so-secretly I was hoping to stumble across one of those video stores that specializes in cheap DVDs of Asian films not available in the American market. As luck would have it, we stumbled across a couple such stores, and I was able to pick up a couple titles I had been looking for, and a couple of Christmas gifts as well. At the urging of the second store's proprietress, who insisted it was one of the best films on the shelves, and in order to meet the 'buy 4 get one free' offer, I picked up today's film, Saulabi, a 2002 South Korean action romance set in feudal Japan. This information is being relayed as a form of full disclosure, because the DVD I bought had only Cantonese and Mandarin language tracks, and subtitles that were burned onto the image and read both Chinese and badly translated English at the same time. It is possible that this was not the most ideal manner in which to judge this film's merits.

Around the turn of this century, South Korean filmmaking seemed to go through a sort of renaiscance, with dozens of slickly produced blockbusters hitting theatres while at the same time a new wave of young, rule-breaking filmmakers came along. Saulabi was released in 2002, and seems to have missed that rising tide of quality Korean films. Saulabi (a Korean word that roughly translates as 'he who fights') is basically a classic Greek tragedy filtered through a Samurai film, with a layer of historical Korean references that probably went over my head a lot of the time. The plot was easy enough to follow once it got going, but I'm certain there were intricacies I missed due to mistranslation, or simply owing to my ignorance of the time period. To break it down into its basics; A band of warriors travels from Korea to Japan to repair the broken Heaven's Sword and return their nation to glory. Years later, one of these warriors meets a Japanese lord and begins to work for him, while also falling in love with the lord's daughter, who is engaged to be married to the lord's master. As you can see, it's a pretty simple love triangle set within the type of honor-filled, somewhat bureaucratic minefield that a lot of Japanese tragedies take place in (I'm thinking specifically of Chushingura, in which the entire sad affair is begun because a feudal lord didn't have enough tatami mats when a visiting official arrived).

The plot of the film is solid enough for this type of thing, but let's be honest, most of the appeal lies in the fight choreography, and on that front, Saulabi is a big disappointment. For the first hour there are only two brief fight scenes, one of which I'm not sure related to the rest of the story at all (again, not the best subtitles). The swordplay is of the old school Kendo variety common in most samurai films, although it never looks or feels natural. I've been able to find very little information about this film online, but an editorial review on Letterboxd.com makes the claim that fight choreography was done by frequent Akira Kurosawa collaborator Eizi Takakura. The problem is, I can find no such name listed anywhere, let alone on an Akira Kurosawa film. IMDb doesn't list most of the crew, but I have trouble believing that anyone who worked with the great Akira Kurosawa had anything to do with this film's fight scenes. I saw a documentary a few years ago about LARPers who made their own PVC weapons and engaged in fake combat on the weekends, and the fighting in that film looked more realistic. In fact, on almost every front Saulabi feels like very little effort went into it. At one point the lord's retinue is travelling through a small Japanese village, which looks authentically like the time period it's supposed to be set in, but the director makes no effort to hide the very modern houses and buildings that are visible just behind this set. It also doesn't help that the lead, Sang Hyun-lee, wears a series of incredibly unconvincing fake beards, and acts with a sort of eternal poutiness.

I don't want to be completely negative about the film, but I must warn you that it's just not very good. It does, however, pick up steam during its final half hour, which appears to span a few months but, at the end, is suddenly revealed to have spanned about 20 years. I'm not saying the acting, directing, or fighting suddenly improve, I'm just saying the amount of incident on screen starts to pile up and it gets comparably much more fun to watch, culminating in an ending so tragic and sudden it inspires dismissive laughter more than the tears the filmmakers were obviously hoping for.

Final Rating: 2(out of 5)

A Visiting & Revisiting Special: Should There Be a Boycott of the 2016 Academy Awards?

This is the second part of a discussion between me and my partner Rik over on The Cinema 4 Pylon. Please head over there to read the first part at: http://bit.ly/1nqDmkS

4. Do you believe a threatened African-American artistic boycott of the 88th Academy Awards in February will be effective in solving the problem of racial diversity within the Academy? Or does it need to be much broader in scope to have any real effect?

Aaron: Do I think it will solve the problem? No, definitely not. Do I think it will help to bring attention and to the problem and the need to fix it? I will answer with a resounding yes. Already the publicity has convinced most rational people that this is a real issue. As I said earlier, Hollywood will only really follow the money; it has no real political or social leanings of its own, no matter what George Clooney wants to think. Hollywood can lead the charge on issues of social justice, and it definitely has in the past, but only once it’s been proven to be profitable. I don’t mean to sound cynical about the Dream Factory, but I think it helps explain why the entertainment industry can be this weird mix of progressive ideology and regressive social viewpoints.

As it stands, I think this situation has been a total embarrassment for the Academy, and there’s really no way they can just ignore this. Last year, when Selma star David Oyelowo was snubbed for Best Actor, the Academy could at least say ‘Yeah, but the film was nominated for Best Picture, so it’s not like we’re ignoring you.’ They could hide behind that attitude even when Selma lost to a movie about a middle-aged white guy grappling with his insecurities. But this year, with so many great performances and films helmed by and featuring people of color, how is it none of them got nominated? It boggles the mind that Straight Outta Compton only got recognized for its screenplay, because it is otherwise the exact sort of movie the Academy loves to gush over: popular, crowd-pleasing, and based on a true story. It hits all of the expected and required beats so perfectly that its lack of inclusion can almost only be read as racist.

And don’t get me started on Creed (which, full disclosure, I have not yet seen). A widely acclaimed, profitable movie written and directed by a black man, about a black man, and the only nomination in the film is for the old white guy that helps him out. This is sort of to be expected, though, because if there’s one thing Hollywood loves more than money, it’s patting themselves on the back, and Stallone’s character in Creed must have hit that sweet spot of white liberal guilt that allowed Academy voters to vicariously feel like the good guy, helping the disaffected black youth. A similar phenomenon was likely at play when The Blind Side and The Help were massive hits awarded with Academy recognition. People want a social issue that they can be the hero of, and so they see Sylvester Stallone helping this kid out, and think to themselves ‘Man, I’d love to be that guy, and prove we aren’t all racist assholes.’ This should not be read as me stating that Stallone doesn’t deserve the Oscar nomination; everything I hear is that he’s quite good in the film, and of course he was nominated for the original Rocky way back when. But to single him out in a film that is getting a lot of acclaim for both its star, Michael B. Jordan, and its co-writer/director, Ryan Coogler, seems a bit odd.

Rik: As we were putting this piece together, Academy president Cheryl Boon Isaacs came out with a statement lamenting the lack of diversity in her organization. Isaacs, who is black, is the only non-white member of the 43-member executive branch, and she put out the statement in response to both Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett-Smith, who both stated they would not be attending the Oscars this year because of the lack of diversity in the nominations. Isaacs said the Academy was instituting a five-year plan, with a goal of 2020, to drastically expand the membership of the Academy to make it more racially and gender diverse.

I personally wish that someone besides Jada Pinkett-Smith had been the first to really speak up about this issue, because she is married to someone whom it is widely believed should have received an Oscar nomination this year. Lee himself had his own horse in the race with Chi-Raq. While their announcements were certainly heard, they could potentially just be perceived as so many sour grapes. On the other side, Lee also just received an Honorary Oscar in November for his lifetime of film work, and so his absence from the February ceremony when they call his name will be noticed greatly.

No call for a wider boycott has actually been put out, but what if it did? I am not sure it will be all that effective without Hollywood itself changing massively in the types of films it puts out and how it hires minorities across the board. But if a boycott did occur, it would have to include far more than just African-Americans or Asian-Americans or women... it would need to be as diverse as the intended goal. Isaacs said the Academy's goal was 2020, and that seems to have been said to buy them some time, but will people be accepting of this type of a “wait and see” response? The only real way to get the Academy's notice is to hit them where it hurts the most: a full-scale boycott of the broadcast itself, and that might including hitting potential advertisers in the pocketbook as well. Otherwise, it will be sound and fury. And then, the only option would be to wait for five years to see if anything has happened.

And I somewhat agree on your point about Stallone’s nomination possibly fulfilling a form of white liberal guilt on the part of the members who voted for it, but from my side, I just see it as another example of a Supporting Actor award nomination (or even win) being used to recognize a longtime member for his successful career in Hollywood.

5. Will you skip watching the Oscars this year in recognition of a possible boycott, or can you not keep away?

Rik: I guess the question that we should have asked if “Would you support such a boycott?” My answer would be no, even though I am as desirous of an outcome of wider diversity in the industry as the rest. I just don’t think it is the solution to the problem.

As for skipping the Oscars? Not a friggin’ chance. Can't happen; won't happen. Unless the response is so big that they have to cancel the broadcast, I will be watching the Oscars this year. I would gladly boycott sponsors of the show, but their commercials don't affect us anyway since we purposefully watch the film on a delay so we can zip past most of the ads. Can’t boycott something if you don’t even know they are sponsoring something. (I suppose a list would get compiled, so maybe then…)

I haven't purposefully skipped the Oscars since I was a kid, so why would I start now? It's one of the few ceremonies that I continue to celebrate, even if I readily admit that I don't usually agree with most of the nominations or winners. For me, it is the last bastion of old Hollywood that most of the world gets to see, and I don't want it to go away. They just need to be more inclusive across the board.

Aaron: Yeah, you pretty much answered for me; I will definitely be watching the ceremony. At this point there is no way the issue won’t be addressed, either by a presenter, a winner, or host Chris Rock, and I’m looking forward to that. But then, I’d just be watching the awards anyway. While I realize the awards show is flawed, it’s always been that way. The movies that get nominated and awarded are never the ones I want, and the award is next to meaningless to anybody not in that room. It’s Hollywood congratulating itself for a few hours, and selling advertising space while doing so. This year the scandal gives the show the opportunity to be relevant and meaningful for the first time… maybe ever.

I see there have been some calls for Chris Rock to join the boycott and step down from his role as host this year, and I dearly hope he does not listen. If he leaves the show, sure, the parade of white stars and producers will paint an ugly portrait of racism in Hollywood, but it will also deprive the show of the one voice that could honestly address the situation from the viewpoint of someone affected by it. If we see Brad Pitt get up there and talk about diversity in Hollywood, or George Clooney talk about how Hollywood should lead the charge on these issues, it’s going to feel just as masturbatory as the rest of the ceremony. If Chris Rock is up there speaking, or if Spike Lee actually was allowed on stage, it would be an opportunity to actually speak out and affect some change.

In the end I think my thoughts echo those of Viola Davis, who said “The problem is not with the Oscars, the problem is with the Hollywood movie-making system.” The Academy Awards are a reflection of the year for the Hollywood studios; it doesn’t fully reflect the face of what is really going on in American cinema. A lot of the most vibrant and diverse works being produced will never make it onto a ballot, partially because a lot of those films, and the artists working on them, are non-union and therefore have no voice in the voting process.

Take the 2015 film Tangerine, which is miles away from the type of fare the Oscars usually reward, and is therefore nowhere to be seen in the list of nominees. Tangerine follows the story of two transgender women as they scour West Hollywood for the pimp who has wronged one of them, and was one of the most energetic and vibrant films I saw last year. The film was shot for around $100,000, and on an iPhone no less (though you wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t know that information beforehand), which was necessitated by the fact that no studio in Hollywood would have dared fund the film. Like I said, not the type of film the Academy would normally praise, and yet that speaks to the blinkered existence in which the Academy lives.

So, you have a vibrant film scene happening under the radar in Hollywood, a scene that is inclusive of all comers, and more representative of what most people experience in the world around them. The fact that these films, and filmmakers, are excluded from awards recognition is not really the fault of the Oscars, outside of the fact that union membership seems to be an unofficial requirement of becoming a voting member. In order for the Academy Awards to recognize more diverse works, they need to urge their members to look outside of the big studio output, or the big studios need to start making a more diverse product. Right now it’s a little bit like a feedback loop; the studios continue making whitewashed tentpole movies and crowd-pleasing dramas, because that’s what audiences and awards shows like. The awards shows like those whitewashed crowd-pleasers because that’s the only thing being made, and on and on and on it will go until someone decides to make a change. I believe the decision to expand Academy membership and recruit new members is the right one, but it remains to be seen if it will be enough. I’ll tell you one thing, I am actually more interested in seeing this year’s Oscars than I have been in quite awhile.

2016 Movie a Day: Jupiter Ascending

One of the great paradoxes of the modern age of filmmaking is that a large number of movies are made every year that are seemingly designed with my particular tastes in mind, and yet I like so few of them. Slickly produced action and horror movies in the 'isn't this shit awesome?!' mold flood the theatres every year, and every year I dutifully check in on them and feel nothing bit a nagging boredom as they go through the motions of presenting me with everything my 13 year old self would have killed to see, with production values my younger self could never have imagined. Like Priest, about a man of the cloth hunting down vampires in an old west setting, or Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, which is about Abraham Lincoln hunting vampires, or I, Frankenstein, about the titular doctor's monster fighting demons throughout the ages. I should love them, but they all feel so lifeless, so free of personality and individuality, that I can't seem to muster any enjoyment out of them. Which made it such a modest joy to finally sit down and watch Jupiter Ascending, the latest (and possibly last) big budget mashup of pulpy comic book influences to come from the Wachowski Siblings. Say what you will about it's byzantine plot, so overstuffed that it feels like three movies stuffed into one, or complain all you want about the silliness of Channing Tatum playing a half-wolf, gravity-defying surfer dude by the improbably name of Caine Wise trying to save the life of Mila Kunis as a housekeeper who is secretly the intergalactic queen of our section of the universe with the even more improbable name of Jupiter Jones, but at least the film has a personality.

After the Matrix, the Wachowskis have had trouble recapturing success, though personally I've found everything they've worked on to be worthy of attention. I wasn't a huge fan of the Matrix sequels, particularly their mix of boring committee dialogue of the type that sank the Star Wars prequels with MTV-ready rave scenes, but they at least showcased filmmakers taking the philosophical discussions within their film seriously. I'm quite fond of Speed Racer, and Cloud Atlas may be their masterpiece. Although these films all have their followers, they've each fared successively worse at the box office. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal before Jupiter Ascending came out, the Wachowskis seemed to realize that their Hollywood moment was coming to an end: "We've been lucky," Lana says. "People at studios have been interested in our crazy, strange brand of complexity. And we've been allowed to keep making them. Will that continue? Probably not." "But it was a good run," Andy added.

So, with the knowledge that this would probably be their last chance to play around with a huge studio budget at their command, the Wachowskis appear to have thrown every leftover script idea they had into one go-for-broke, crazy ass movie, peppering things throughout with references to the sci-fi and fantasy properties that have inspired them. The film isn't the most original, groundbreaking story you're likely to see, and they actually pilfer a couple of concepts from their own films, but it has a goofiness that overpowered me into just grinning along with every ridiculous development. The film's major downfall, and it is a rather big one, is that the duo haven't gotten any better at dialogue or exposition. It's never a good sign when a film begins with a voice-over that explains the rules of the world we're about to see, and Jupiter Ascending frequently feels like it's stopping to impart jargon-filled information we need to digest in order to keep up. This is something they've struggled with through their entire career, but it's at its worst in this film, even though the exposition scenes usually come with a few crazy looking aliens.

Jupiter Ascending is no classic, but it's better than its current reputation would suggest. For once there's a film that appeals to everything 13 year old me would want, complete with totally awesome skating scenes and a 'chosen one' story that thankfully doesn't feature a drama-killing prophecy. Taken on those grounds, the film is a lot of fun, although it does make me excited to see what the Wachowskis might do now with a smaller focus, a tighter budget, and more polished dialogue.

Final rating: 3.5 (out of 5)

2016 Movie a Day: Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets

I first became aware of the band Pulp around the same time most people became aware of the band Pulp. Different Class, their big breakthrough album after twelve years toiling away and building a critical following, came out in America in early 1996, and I picked it up in the waning days of my senior year of high school. Different Class was a milestone record, sporting mega-hits Common People and Disco 2000, and has been one of those rare albums that never quite leaves my rotation. I put it on fairly regularly to this day, almost exactly twenty years later. It took me awhile to work my way into the Pulp back catalog, which has several solid albums in it, but I followed them going forward pretty closely. They fit right in with the other groups I was obsessing over at the time; Blur, Suede, Morrissey, James, Oasis, Radiohead, and other bands benefiting from the britpop boom of the nineties. But Pulp had an awkwardness, a bookishness that spoke to me as an awkward, bookish teen. Frontman Jarvis Cocker's awkward, spastic dancing and androgynous, angular looks had a style of cool that felt more achievable to me than the pin-up-ready good looks of Brett Anderson or Damon Albarn. Pulp may not have ever occupied the top spot in my favorite bands of that boom (that honor belonged to Suede), but they've always held a special place in my heart. In 2000, during a trip to London, I made it a point to visit Bar Italia, the coffee shop in SoHo that they sing about in the Different Class track of the same name. I still have the saucer and cup I used that night.

Bar Italia, with a cheap disposable camera.

Pulp's sudden success after years of work didn't quite sit well with the band, and they broke up in 2002, shortly after the release of We Love Life. Jarvis Cocker remained active with a couple of solid solo albums and some appearances with other artists, but most people figured Pulp was done for. So imagine my pleasant surprise at the news that Pulp was reuniting in 2012 for an international tour, culminating in, I hoped, a new album. Unfortunately the album never came, and the tour was instead a chance for Jarvis and Co. to give their fans a proper farewell (as Cocker puts it in the film, he wanted to give the band a "happy ending"). We never got a new Pulp album, but we did get Pulp: A Film about Life, Death & Supermarkets, which documents the final night of the farewell tour, as Pulp plays their hometown of Sheffield, England.

The film is a bit of an odd beast, and will likely only appeal to a small segment of viewers, even those who already like Pulp. It's not quite a concert film, as it never shows an entire song performed in its entirety. It's not quite a band history, as the documentary only briefly touches on things that would already be known by most fans. The film attempts to be a street level snapshot and ode to Sheffield, which is a fairly blue collar industrial town in the north of England, and yet we don't get a very detailed view of the place. With all these half measures, it might be a bit surprising that I enjoyed the film as much as I did. But the film does have moments of beauty, and it has aspirations beyond simply showing the band playing their hits, or giving a standard rise-fall-rise rock-doc narrative. Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets aims to give a feeling of the place of Sheffield, if not the accurate image of it, and it tries to show how this feeling shaped the band Pulp, which in turn shaped how the townspeople of Sheffield see themselves now.

The concert footage that is on display in the film looks electric, reaching its pinnacle with an energetic, inclusive version of Common People that should renew the song's energy to those who have tired of the two decades worth of overplay and questionable cover versions. It's enough to make one wish for an actual concert film, with the full concert on display. It's hard to complain about what we have, though, when it's as idiosyncratic and enjoyable as this. I'm having trouble thinking of another rock documentary that had a moment as odd and beautiful as a diner full of senior citizens singing an acoustic version of Help The Aged.


Final Rating: 4 (out of a possible 5)

2016 Movie A Day: Bone Tomahawk

This is something I put on partly in order to hold me over for The Hateful Eight (which I still have yet to see), as it's another talky western starring Kurt Russell in what is essentially a starter-beard version of the one he wears in the Tarantino film. Bone Tomahawk does its best to hide the shoe-string budget it appears to have had, and yet it falls short at a few key moments. Many stretches of the film are clearly framed to avoid revealing anything that might ruin the illusion of its historical setting, and the town we start the film in has the look of one of those well maintained ghost towns you can take guided tours through. Overall the film fails to convey a sense of the wide open country the characters are travelling through, and sometimes gives the impression that Kurt Russell and his posse are camping out in somebodies backyard. That isn't necessarily a fatal flaw, but giving the film, or at least the film's world, a wider, less organized scope would have heightened the stakes considerably. It would also have helped disguise some of the rougher patches of the script, and a few of the more one-note performances. Outside of Russell, who is great as always, and Richard Jenkins, who is flat out phenomenal, none of the performers rise above the stock characters they've been asked to play. Patrick Wilson is his usual wooden self (though not without his charms), and Matthew Fox never feels like he's anything other than a 21st century man putting on period clothes for a long weekend of Civil War reenacting.

It's wrong to fault a film for what are, basically, unavoidable budgetary problems, but too often the film settles for 'good' when it could have been something special. Still, Russell and Jenkins carry the film with their natural, lived-in chemistry. Into the last 30 minutes, Bone Tomahawk takes a sharp turn into horror film territory, and although this is obviously the goal from the outset, it's still an effectively jarring transition. Suddenly, after all the languorous walking and talking, the film suddenly becomes an incredibly gory cannibal movie. The end credits feature a theme song that tells the story of the film, common to a lot of old Italian westerns, but the film could have used a bit more of the visual zeal and energy also common to those films.

I'll give this a solid 3 (out of 5). I liked it, enough to possibly watch it again, but only enough to recommend it to those already inclined to be interested in a talky, slow, gory western film.