Category Archives: Film Fodder

It’s hard not to laugh at Ferrell and Hart in “Get Hard”

Photo by Patti Perret.

Pairing a rich white goofball with a working-class black family man isn’t the most original comedic idea. But it’s not a bad way to make your directorial debut, especially if the millionaire is Will Ferrell and the guy washing his car is Kevin Hart. Director Etan Cohen, best known for his writing work on Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill, brings a similar style of offensive (yet somewhat smart) humor to the Trading Places-esque Get Hard.

Despite his genius-like skills in hedge fund investing, James (Ferrell) lacks social tact and has little common sense. Which is why he is easily framed for tax evasion, resulting in him being sentenced to a lengthy stay in prison. Having lived an incredibly comfortable and sheltered life, James enlists Darnell (Hart) to prepare him for prison life for $3o,ooo (a drop in the bucket for James, but a life saver for Darnell). The only problem is Darnell has never been to prison and James’ assumption is based purely on the fact that Darnell is black.

Photo by Patti Perret.

What follows is one stereotype-based racial joke after another, with plenty of gay jokes (including the movie’s title) thrown in for equal opportunity offensiveness. Ferrell excels at playing the dumbfounded dimwit, and seeing his character trying to adapt to urban culture is almost as funny as Buddy the elf’s culture shocking obliviousness in Elf. Hart’s strength is playing the squeaky-voiced, Chris Tucker-like funny guy, so he has no trouble assuming that role once again here. There’s even a cameo by Shad Gaspard who, despite the gang-banging Cryme Tyme persona he brought to WWE, does not portray a thuggish criminal.

Get Hard‘s funniest moments occur after Darnell turns to his cousin Russell, a hardened thug who actually has served time, for help preparing the entitled James for prison life. As Russell, T.I. surprisingly steals every scene he’s in. After Darnell realizes James is not even guilty of the crime that is sending him to prison, Get Hard climaxes with a ridiculously hilarious Capoeira display by James that results in him being exonerated. The entire fiasco results in James, Darnell and everyone that helped them gaining a new appreciation for each other’s lifestyles. So even with all the offensive humor, there’s a somewhat positive message in the end. But even without that, it would be hard for this movie not to evoke a few guilty laughs from just about anyone.

gethardmovie.com

Despite impressive visuals, “Jupiter Ascending” fails to soar to sci-fi greatness

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While comparisons to Star Wars are inevitable, Jupiter Ascending doesn’t take place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Instead it is mostly set on the planet Jupiter in the present, where, underneath the incessant gaseous storms on its surface, there’s a world dominated by a royal family of humanoid aliens. But it’s not just our solar system’s largest planet this family rules as it has secretly harvested and seeded life on Earth and other planets, which comes as a shock to Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), who is whisked away from her miserable life as Chicago’s sexiest janitor after her alien queen doppelgänger dies, leaving three heir unapparents to quarrel over who gets to inherit the Earth.

You’re not in Chicago anymore, Jupiter. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

With it’s impressive outer space visuals and conspiratorial overtones, my first thought was that this movie is trying really hard to be the next The Matrix. Then I realized it was written and directed by the Wachowskis (formerly known as the Wachowski Brothers until Larry became Lana, a transformation of which I have only recently become aware), so it makes sense that it should have a Matrix-like feel to it. And with its multiple alien races including Roswellian grays that specialize in abducting people and implanting things in them, reptilians and the vampiric royal family (not vampires, though there is a clever line of dialogue acknowledging that they are responsible for many vampire myths), Jupiter Ascending is also reminiscent of films such as The Fifth Element, the aforementioned Star Wars franchise, Flash Gordon and Cloud Atlas (another, underrated, Wachowski venture). Oddly, it’s The Wizard of Oz that ends up coming to mind more and more as the movie progresses.

A dark-haired girl from the Midwest is swept away on a colorful otherworldly adventure, only to yearn for a return home to her mundane life. She’s joined by her (half) canine companion Caine Wise (Channing Tatum), some sort of genetic experiment who has defected from the military to come to Jupiter’s rescue. Jupiter even wears blue plaid for the first act of the film, which makes her all the more Dorothy like. Only instead of being greeted by a scarecrow, a tin man and a lion, she encounters Balem (Eddie Redmayne), Kalique (Tuppence Middleton) and Titus (Douglas Booth), the siblings quarreling over Earth. Because of her resemblance to their deceased mother, Jupiter has now surpassed them as the one who shall inherit the Earth. Apparently she is the reincarnation of the late queen, which doesn’t really make sense considering the queen seems to have only recently died and Jupiter is already an adult.

Imagine if Marty McFly’s futuristic shoes were combined with his hoverboard from “Back to the Future Part III”. That’s basically what Channing Tatum’s wolfman character has for boots in “Jupiter Ascending”. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

That’s not the only thing that’s hard to follow here. For example, Caine wears these really cool boots that allow him to fly through the air, surf off the sides of buildings and hover over pretty much anything that gets in his way. When Jupiter asks how he is able to do these things, he explains that the boots basically turn gravity against itself, creating a reverse magnetism sort of thing that allows him to float freely. However, at one point he is blasted out of a spaceship into zero gravity, with his hands cuffed behind his back. He’s able to escape by maneuvering the shackles under his heels, then using his boots to blast them off his wrists. I’m no scientist, but I don’t understand how antigravity boots are able to be used in this manner, especially when there is no gravity to reverse in deep space. Also, if Caine is basically a wolfman, why does he have the same hairless Tatum body we always see? I mean, he has pointy ears and a heightened sense of smell, so should he not also have at least a little bit of pup fluff to make him a convincing dog man?

These and other flaws, such as a few lines of contrived dialogue that come across as laugh-out-loud cheesy when I’m pretty sure they’re meant to be taken seriously, are what keep this film from ascending to the sci-fi splendor the Wachowski’s intended. Still, it has a bunch of beautiful people (thanks to the Fountain of Youth-like serum the royal family bathes in), ornate costumes, great special effects, some cool creatures and a unique take on various urban myths and conspiracies that keep it from descending into total disappointment.

www.jupiterascending.com

“Predestination” explores time travel in horrifying and beautiful ways

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Time travel stories always mess with your head, which is usually what makes them fascinating. And the idea of altering the past based on what one knows about the present (or altering the present based on what one might find out about the future) is always a tempting, yet typically forbidden, action when it comes to time machines. Throw in the occasional theory of certain things being inevitable, regardless of any alterations to the fabric of time, and you’re left with a complicated piece of conceptual cinema.

As if things weren’t already mind-boggling enough, Predestination takes the idea of traveling through time and adds another delusional dimension or two, leaving the viewer reeling with each new revelation. Written and directed by Australian filmmakers Michael and Peter Spierig, and based on a short story by Robert A Heinlein, Predestination stars Ethan Hawke as a Temporal Agent, a time-hopping crime fighter whose violin case is actually a time machine. His final mission is to travel to the past to prevent a terrorist attack by the Fizzle Bomber that did/will result in thousands of deaths in New York City in 1975.

Masquerading as a bartender, this agent strikes up a conversation with a customer (Sarah Snook) whose gender is rather ambiguous given his feminine features and masculine attire. This customer’s sexuality becomes more unclear when he reveals himself to be the Unmarried Mother, a women’s advice columnist. As the inebriation/comfort level rises, the customer reveals that he grew up as Jane, a female orphan who never quite fit in with the other girls. While being an outcast made adolescence difficult, it allows her to excel at recruitment tests for Space Corps, a program that sends young women into space to be glorified escorts for astronauts. She is disqualified, however, after a physical reveals a mysterious discovery about Jane.

She bounces back after falling in love with a strange older man, who inexplicably disappears from her life as quickly as he came into it, leaving her with more than just a broken heart. After the surprising birth of her daughter, Jane finds out exactly why she has always felt a little different from the other girls. It’s because she was born with female and male reproductive organs, and the female ones were damaged during childbirth. Her only option is to go with what she has left, and thus Jane becomes John, the Unmarried Mother. But gender confusion is the least of John’s identity issues.

Already suspecting that the lover that caused Jane to become John is also the Fizzle Bomber, the Temporal Agent sees an opportunity for he and John to find closure. He takes John back in time, to the day that Jane met her lover, so she can get her scorned lover’s revenge and take out the Fizzle Bomber with one bullet. This is the moment when things get really weird. While trying not to interact with his younger female self, John crosses paths with Jane. In the meantime, the Temporal Agent travels to the future to prevent the Fizzle Bomber’s attack. Though no bombs are detonated, things get figuratively explosive for Jane, John and the Temporal Agent as their intertwining fates become more and more apparent and inevitable. Though some aspects of their stories are somewhat predictable, it would be difficult to see any of the ultimate revelations coming, resulting in a story set on a continuous loop that transcends time, space and any other such concepts you can imagine.

With its film noir feel, Predestination recalls the likes of Gattaca (another Hawke sci-fi thriller) and Minority Report. But the way each characters story is woven together with the others is unlike any time travel story movie I’ve ever seen. Influenced more by Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy of the eternal return than by Doc Brown and Back to the Future (though I can’t help but wonder if it’s only a coincidence that the Temporal Bureau is headquartered in 1985, the year that Back to the Future was released), Predestination explores numerous philosophical ideas regarding reality and identity. It’s just as horrifying as it is heartwarming/breaking. And it definitely warrants multiple viewings just to grasp all that is going on.

www.predestination-movie.com

Olympic wrestling is more shocking than pro wrestling in “Foxcatcher”

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Photo by Scott Garfield, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Professional wrestling has had it’s share of dark tragedies, both inside the ring and behind the scenes. But amateur wrestling tends to be much less dramatic, with matches consisting of guys in similar singlets who undergo rigorous, yet simple, training to prove who is the better grappler. Every once in a while, however, an eccentric personality that would be more at home in the pro wrestling world gets involved with amateur wrestling and things get more than a little weird.

Based on the true story of multi-millionaire John Eleuthère du Pont, whose limitless family funds allowed him to indulge in any Howard Hughes-like whim, Foxcatcher recounts the gripping story of du Pont’s obsession with fostering the best wrestlers in the world. Du Pont (played by Steve Carell with facial prosthetics and a dramatic departure from his usual comedic roles) initially recruits Olympic gold medalist Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) to his Foxcatcher Farms, an elaborate estate known for equestrian training. Having built an equally elaborate wrestling training facility, du Pont rescues Mark from small town anonymity with promises of returning him to his former Olympic glory. Mark, whose simplistic nature is played to surprising perfection by Tatum (who walks with a hunch and retains a pouty underbite for the film’s entirety), soon realizes that du Pont is a man who always gets what he wants thanks to his wealth.

Photo by Scott Garfield, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

As a result, Mark delves into du Pont’s dark indulgences, then becomes less cooperative when du Pont’s demands become more and more unreasonable. So du Pont convinces Mark’s brother Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo), also an Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler, to uproot his family and move to Foxcatcher. Du Pont then becomes the official sponsor of USA Wrestling and the entire American Olympic wrestling team becomes Team Foxcatcher, training under Dave for the 1996 Summer Olympics. (Though he doesn’t appear in the film, Total Nonstop Action Wrestling Hall of Famer Kurt Angle was part of Team Foxcatcher before winning his gold medal.) Having a rich guy fund such an amazing facility in hopes of proving that America has the world’s best wrestlers seems too good to be true, and the tension between du Pont and the Schultz brothers becomes more and more apparent. While it’s never fully disclosed in Foxcatcher, du Pont is apparently a paranoid schizophrenic who has difficulty with any sort of confrontation (among many other illogical things), as evidenced by troubling behavior such as walking into the training facility and firing a gun into the ceiling to get the attention he feels he deserves. This scene foreshadows what will happen once his questionable motives and mental problems come to full fruition, which I won’t spoil for those who aren’t familiar with this tragedy.

With incredible performances from Carell, Tatum, Ruffalo and others, as well as a compelling real-life story brought to dramatic life by director Bennett Miller and writers E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman, Foxcatcher is a shocking and surreal look at a mentally disturbed millionaire whose inner conflict has both tragic and triumphant results. It’s the type of movie that messes with most of your emotions, which is exactly why it’s such an excellent piece of cinema.

“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1” creates a hunger for the next film

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Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence, right) is reunited with Gale (Liam Hemsworth, left) to lead a rebellion in “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1”. Photo by Murray Close.

As unwilling as she was to be the Capitol‘s pawn in The Hunger Games and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) finds herself at the forefront of a growing rebellion against the Orwellian government in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1. Despite having inspired this rebellion with her defiance in the previous two films, Katniss is almost as reluctant to lead this battle as she was to participate in the Games initially. Grieving the loss of Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), Katniss is too busy blaming herself for his capture by the Capitol to lead a rebellion against it. At the urging of President Coin (Julianne Moore) and Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and after seeing the death and destruction the Capitol is willing to inflict on those who defy its authority, Katniss agrees to lead this battle.

Mockingjay is about as different from its two predecessors as it could possibly get. Instead of the every-man-for-himself nature of The Hunger Games and the uneasy alliances that were formed in Catching Fire, Katniss is now leading a united front with the common goal of overthrowing the Capitol and restoring freedom. With the Capitol somewhat weakened, and the districts (including Katniss’ own District 12) mostly destroyed, the elaborate costumes, makeup and hair have been replaced with utilitarian gray jumpsuits, even for the otherwise flamboyant Effie (Elizabeth Banks) and a reluctantly sober Haymitch (Woody Harrelson). Instead of being forced to take part in the senseless deaths of her peers for mass viewing enjoyment, Katniss witnesses mass murders by anonymous Peacekeepers, all wearing the same white helmets and armor. And despite the Capitol’s best attempts to prevent the rebellion from growing, more and more commoners are being inspired by Katniss and risking their own lives to take down their oppressors.

Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) is doing the Capitol’s bidding in “Mockingjay – Part 1”. But is he being forced into it? Photo by Murray Close.

But in much the same way that Katniss never meant for her actions in the Games to inspire this rebellion, it’s the hope of rescuing Peeta from President Snow (Donald Sutherland), not the desire to lead a revolution, that drives her. The fact that she has already been reunited with her other sort-of boyfriend Gale (Liam Hemsworth) makes her struggle that much more difficult. And with the Capitol using a seemingly brainwashed Peeta to spread its propaganda, it’s often difficult for Katniss to maintain the emotional strength needed to lead this battle.

Like the first two films, Mockingjay, at times, invokes other dystopian works such as Aliens, Metropolis and The Matrix trilogy, visually and thematically. But in doing so it creates an interesting new chapter in The Hunger Games saga that shows the characters maturing as darker times are on the horizon. And with what should be a celebratory finale before next year’s Mockingjay – Part 2, we’re instead left with a disturbing cliffhanger, both on a personal level for Katniss and on a larger scale for the entire rebellion. For those who weren’t already hooked by the first two films, Mockingjay leaves this viewer hungry (pun intended) for the next chapter.

www.thehungergamesexclusive.com

The Buried Alive Film Fest presents the world premiere of “Recompense”

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Since it began nine years ago, the Buried Alive Film Fest has grown to the point that it is moving to a new location (Fabrefaction Theatre) and features numerous American and world premieres this year. Hisayasu Satō’s Hana Dama: The Origins is coming all the way from Japan (along with its producer and actress), Finland’s Fists of Fire makes it’s animated American debut with director Tomi Malkki in attendance and Atlanta’s own Ebola Entertainment presents the world premiere of Satanic Panic 2: Battle of the Bands. With short films and features constantly in production or post production, Tiltawhirl Pictures’ Dayne Noffke will also be in attendance for the world premiere of Recompense, a short film about a man who offers his soul to his voodoo-practicing cellmate in exchange for his freedom. With the film screening as part of the Scary Animal Monsters from Outer Space program on Nov. 23, Noffke talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the inspiration behind the film, as well as the rewards and sacrifices that went into making it.

Where did the inspiration for Recompense come from?

Daniel Collins plays James in “Recompense”.

The inspiration came from the location. I was asked by Film Athens to go on a location tour of Lexington, Ga. This place is ten miles from Athens, but I didn’t even know it existed because it’s not on the way to anywhere. I’d never been there and I thought, “What the hell’s going to be in Lexington? Why do I want to go?” I agreed to go and thought there wasn’t going to be anything. But this place is a gem. There are crazy antebellum mansions with slave quarters out back, there’s a freaking swamp, it’s just crazy. It’s very Andy Griffith, but even more Southern. There’s lots of really neat studs there, the people are really nice, they really want people to come there and make movies. They see it happening in places like Covington and they want to attract people there. But at this point, no one knows about it. So the last place they took us was the jail. I said, “You have a jail?!” It’s a jail that was used through the ’70s and it’s just like the Andy Griffith jailhouse, two cells and a big open room. It was left exactly like it was and they’re ultimately going to turn it into a museum. When I saw it I thought, “Right now this doesn’t cost a lot of money and they want people to shoot here. If I wait until everyone knows about this and starts shooting here, it’s going to cost a lot of money and it won’t be such a cool location because it will have been used 100 times. I’m going to go home tonight and write a script.”

I had been wanting to do something with voodoo forever just from living in New Orleans and being a big fan of Southern Gothic stuff. I thought about who I could get, I thought about what I could do in a jail and I sat down and wrote it that night. We shot the bonfire voodoo scene outside on the coldest November day in forever. Then we shot the jail scene last January. I saw the jail and thought, “Voodoo. Karma. Everything has a price. Freedom. That all goes together.” It really all came from the location.

What were some of the challenges of shooting in such a cramped location during these colder months?

Every film is a challenge. If they weren’t, what would be the point? If you aren’t challenging yourself when you make films, then you’re not learning anything, you’re not reaching and you’re not doing it right. But some films are more physically demanding than others and this one was definitely that. My crew had the best attitude ever. The first night we shot in a friend’s back yard and we had trouble getting electricity outside, setting up the bonfire, keeping the bonfire going so we’d have some continuity, and it was 25 degrees. That night was really weird because our director of photography had gotten the flu. So we had to find someone to shoot it in three hours. We didn’t say a word to anyone because we knew somehow we would make it happen. We found a friend who is a wedding videographer in Athens, Edwin Hammond, who came out and rescued us. He did a really good job. I knew we could play it kind of fast and loose because it’s almost like a dream sequence. So it didn’t have to match up perfectly and we had a little more leeway in shooting that part. But he had about 20 minutes to look through the script and set everything up.

Sean Polite as Guillaume in “Recompense”.

The second day was at the jail. There was supposed to be heat in the jail, but there wasn’t. The cell was really small so my monitor had to sit outside the cell and I would direct through the bars. One technical thing I learned on this shoot is what a pain in the ass glasses are when you have an actor wearing glasses. I wanted Sean [Polite], who plays Guillaume, to wear his glasses because they match the character, and because he really needs them to see. I probably wasted two hours of the day saying, “I can see the corner of the reflector in his glasses. You’ve got to move it to the right a little. Oh, now we don’t have enough light. Now I can see the boom mic in his glass. OK, I can see my hair.” These little technical things are things that you learn as you go. By the time you figure out that’s going on, you’ve committed to it because you’ve got so many scenes of him in glasses. Then we had a few crew members who weren’t able to make it, sot we were working with a shortened crew and that lengthened our day. That day was about 17 hours. Ideally I never want to go over a 12-hour day.

Recompense premieres at the Buried Alive Film Festival on Nov. 23. Will it be screening anywhere else after that?

There’s a chance it’s going to show up in a future anthology, so I’m holding it back for a little bit. I had it online for a while, but I pulled it down. There are a couple of smaller festivals coming up, but I’m trying to hold it back until I figure out if it’s going to make it’s way into this feature or not.

buriedalivefilmfest.com

“Dumb and Dumber To” is just as dumb as its predecessor

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Photo by Hopper Stone.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the Farrelly brothers introduced us to a couple of idiots named Harry Dunne and Lloyd Christmas with Dumb and Dumber, a movie that spawned much more slapstick silliness in movies like Kingpin, There’s Something About Mary, Shallow Hal and The Three Stooges. While people usually change quite a bit over the course of 20 years, such is not the case with Harry and Lloyd in Dumb and Dumber To.

Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey reprise their respective roles and unwittingly stumble into a road trip not unlike the one from the first film as Harry learns that he and Fraida Felcher (Kathleen Turner) have a long-lost daughter. After Harry tells Lloyd that he needs a kidney transplant, the two decide to track down this daughter, who has been raised by Dr. Pichlow (Steve Tom), a famous scientist whose poor health is preventing him from delivering a package containing a billion-dollar discovery to a big science conference. So Harry and Lloyd set out to find Penny Pichlow (Rachel Melvin) and to deliver this world-changing package in a hearse borrowed from the nursing home where Fraida works, with Lloyd having ulterior motives after seeing how beautiful Penny is.

Photo by Hopper Stone.

There’s no doubt that Penny is Harry’s daughter, given her absentmindedness, simplemindedness and general lack of sense of any kind. Between her preparing to give a speech at the conference in her father’s absence (while unwittingly arousing every nerd she encounters), Harry trying to get the package to Penny (while unwittingly being mistaken for Dr. Pichlow by conference organizers), Lloyd trying to secretly meet Penny so he can propose to her, and Dr. Pichlow’s wife (Laurie Holden) and her secret lover (Rob Riggle) being unwittingly foiled in their attempts to steal the package from Harry and Lloyd, theres a lot of bumbling going on. Much like the plot, many of the same jokes are recycled in Dumb and Dumber To. That’s usually good enough for a hearty chuckle or more, but sometimes it falls a little flat.

Despite it’s shortcomings, I’m not going to say I hate Dumb and Dumber To. But I’m also not going to say I love it. I will admit that I like it. In fact, I might even say I like it a lot.

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