Travis Bickle on the Riviera – month no.2 – February

Shorter list, as I had an insanely busy month in February. These are in order as I watched them unlike the previous month. Watched a lot of tv shows this month, as well spent a lot of time the hell away from any chance of watching a movie. Spare pickings, next month I plan on doing a proper director series (Lucas kinda, I guess, but I mean a real series of like 6 or 7 films).

legend –  * = new and great, RW = rewatch, C = personal classic, X = garbage, T= theater
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01. Hump Day (2009) Lyn Shelton – X
While Mark Duplass is really great in most things, this movie is lazy and pointless. Yeah I get it best friends sexual tension blah blah. Superbad covered this territory better. You probably think that’s a bad comparison – but seriously, the awkward two bros lying in bed together quietly freaking out and trying not to be gay thing actually works better when it’s two kids who can’t get laid instead of a married fucking man and his whoremongering best friend. There isn’t much worth caring about here, there isn’t even anything worth saying negatively other than, yeah, it doesn’t work on any level. Even the awkward moments aren’t the right kind of interesting awkward.

02. The Puffy Chair (2005) The Duplass Bros – *
This is way more like it. I’ve been watching The League because Nick Kroll and Paul Scheer are on it and got sucked it. It’s a really fantastic show by my standards of comedy – which are generally that it’s funny if the show features funny people being incredibly mean to one another. The one guy on the show aside from Kroll (who is just amazing at being the most intentionally unlikeable person on a tv since Dana Snyder in the early episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force), is Mark Duplass as Pete, playing the guy who’s life is falling apart over the course of the series while he barely cares and screws with everyone, mostly just because. ( Completely unrelated note – that show has made “Ghana” into the best insult of all time). So I looked to see what else Duplass was in, and found out that he was one of the founders of mumblecore, a movement I have zero knowledge of beyond “I heard that there are movies where Greta Gerwig gets naked, you know that girl from Greenberg and House of the Devil” (did you see Greenberg? I kept getting the feeling that it needed Greenberg to be a detective and go all in on being the new Long Goodbye it wanted to be or it needed to be half an hour longer of Stiller going all hate spiral before making a 2hr phonecall). Anyway mumblecore is basically a bunch of movies with no budgets but more plot than Stranger than Paradise.

Mark Duplass wrote and directed this with his brother (though he’s not credited as codirector), he also starred in it, and the movie is basically half-improvised and plotted along the lines of the brothers real life. Duplass’ girlfriend in the movie is his real life girlfriend, he has a brother and the parents in the movie are their real parents. The story is basically a couple who are going on a road trip and the relationship is going to go either way. Duplass plays a guy who is constantly simmering with anger but never boils over, even when he’s the most charming dude in the world.  Katie Asleton is adorable but pushes it to annoying often enough  - it’s clear why these two would be attracted to one another and why they would also drive each other crazy. The trick of the film is that you go through the entire experience with them and are still not sure what they are going to do at the end – I was surprised, and that doesn’t really happen in movies about relationships, well… ever. This was a good reminder that while you can usually write off whole genres of movies for just being predictable and boring – I mean, romances aren’t usually great movies these days – but the right delivery can make anything great. In general, I need to be entertained to enjoy a movie but the best things are movies that don’t have any of the great hooks and can suck you in just as well. Movies like this, like Shoot the Piano Player last month – those are the movies that can break your heart because suddenly you’re just watching people being interesting instead of anything dramatic. Two people talking suddenly becomes the most interesting thing in the world – that’s a good movie.

Best movie I watched this month, hands down. And it made me like a Death Cab For Cutie song because it’s so perfect in the opening credits. Hard thing to do.

03. The Ten (2007) David Wain – X
David Wain has done some very funny work over the years – I’m a pretty big fan of Role Models, and this features a lot of the same people. But The Ten is so goddamn tone deaf, and aside from the MRI machines skit, isn’t particularly funny at all. I seriously think I missed something important in not seeing the State when I was super young like a lot of people. Along with Mr Show and the Kids in the Hall, that seems like a big touchstone for people that I just don’t have (although I still try to talk about the Upright Citizen Brigade tv show and people never know what I’m talking about so same deal). Sketch movies almost never work, and this weird Decalogue is more loose even than the most erratic episode of Flying Circus. About as good as the Reno 911 movie, but without a Rock cameo.

04. Lemmy (2010) Greg Olliver+ Wes Orshoski
Not a particularly good documentary, more of a “this guy is awesome” special. But the format it’s made in is so ready for someone else to slam onto another iconoclastic figure (seriously my first reaction was if they could make the same doc for Moebius), where it divides the film between their working day, a lot of discussion about their work but with a focus on what they like, some personal stuff but only after a lot of discussion of both process and influence. I mean I could watch Lemmy talk about Little Richard all the goddamn day, I could really care less about all these guys going “Lemmy is amazing” but the format is something solid.

05. THX-1138 (theatrical cut) (1971) George Lucas – RW, *, C – LUCAS ON LASERDISC
06. American Graffiti (1975) George Lucas – RW – LUCAS ON LASERDISC
Lucas on Laserdisc on Emma Peel Session 52 – post forthcoming.

07. The Fearless Freaks (2005) Bradley Beasley – RW
Watched this trying to get the gears working for a project a friend and I are working on (to no avail sadly), where Wayne Coyne is a huge influence on a character. I dunno, outside of that I really like rock docs I think there’s something inherently interesting because aside from ones produced by vh1 they all take drastically differing approaches and all generally satisfy on the “spend time with a possible genius”. So far not much has gotten close to “Filth and the Fury” (or for that matter Spinal Tap) but 2hrs of Wayne Coyne talking is still more compelling that any 50 things you care to mention.

08. Dementia 13 (1963) Francis Ford Coppola
Chances are you know about this as any number of awesome movie posters rather than a real movie. (fun fact this is the movie playing on the tv in Dennis Franz’s hotel room in Blow Out). This is a Psycho rip off that occasionally has some quietly badass filmmaking thrown in between the horrible awkward dialog and terrible plot. Patrick MacGee – the writer from Clockwork Orange aka the most intense actor in a Kubrick film – shows up and totally underplays the psychiatrist role. Basically you want to watch the scene where the mother collapses at the grave, and you want to watch the scene where the main character drags the body to the water. The rest – well you can say you saw Coppola’s first non-porno movie (anyone who has a copy of his porno, let me know, I bet it’s ultra-terrible).

09. Lord Love a Duck (1966) George Axelrod – RW
Lolita remade as the Magic Christian, written by the man who wrote the Manchurian Candidate, starring Roddy MacDowell, Harvey Korman (!) and Minnie Castavet from Rosemary’s Baby(!!). The kind of parody movie that starts off as a series of parodies but takes on it’s own logic until it’s just this anarchic weirdness. Like, there’s a beach movie and an Apartment style love story, but it also presupposes Heathers in a lot of ways. The dialog is oblique, the plot is unhinged, the jokes are funny but also unnerving. This is the good shit.

10. The Sunset Limited (2011) Tommy Lee Jones – *
Tommy Lee Jones’ final monologue destroys everything. The absolute darkest thing I’ve seen in a while delivered with absolute certainty and completely painful. Jones takes all the gravitas he had in No Country for Old Men and turns it sour, it completely took me aback. Sam Jackson – yeah, he’s great but unsurprising. Jones just guts you at the end, saying what he knows to be the absolute truth.

11. Miami Blues (1990) George Armitage – *
Jennifer Jason Leigh is finer than hell in this, pre-Hudsucker Proxy. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen this before – a normal 80s actioner in it’s rhythms but the story is completely bizarre and the action scenes way more brutal than anything that came after 1981 has any right to come out of Hollywood. Baldwin, a guy I totally associate with complete control, plays weird and crazy here in a strange reversal of Mel Gibson in every movie that isn’t Lethal Weapon. Great movie. Fulfills the one rule that makes a movie great – I can’t think of another movie that tells this story, even though the story is told super-conventionally.

12. The Warriors (1979) Walter Hill – RW, C
A goddamn masterpiece. Walter Hill absolutely making a perfect action movie, with a comic book sensibility but the nastiness of real late 70s NYC locations and a lot of real nyc gangs and cops as extras. Great cast, great fights, totally deserving of a huge blog post on it’s own. So I’ll probably do that soonish. Maybe. Fun fact – Tony Danza was almost the one who played Vermin. Which would have been hilarious. Also Walter Hill is the GOD of setting badass finales on beaches. It’s like his version of the mexican standoff.

13. Spinal Tap (1984) Rob Reiner – RW, C
Every time it’s on tv, I have to watch the whole thing. What about the bird? Did you do the dead bird?

14. Baghead (2008) Duplass Bros.
Not the film that The Puffy Chair was, but definitely good enough for me to give more mumblecore a chance. Hurt by the fact that Mark Duplass isn’t in it, but saved by Greta Gerwig getting naked, which I hear is totally the appeal of this microgenre as a whole. If you fudged the story a little you could say it’s a fictionalized version of the making of the first Evil Dead. A couple good scares, a few funny moments. Made me really want to see Cyrus, see which end of the spectrum it’ll end up on.

15.. Star Wars (1977 theatrical cut) George Lucas – RW, *, C – LUCAS ON LASERDISC
Lucas on Laserdisc on Emma Peel Session 52 – post forthcoming.

16. Unknown (2011) Juame Collet-Serra – *, T

Liam Neeson Murders Europe 2: Berlin. Not as good as Liam Neeson Murders Europe: Paris (aka Taken) (aka the movie where Liam Neeson fucks up that guy’s kneecaps), probably because it’s slightly more mature and not nearly as racist as the previous installment. Still, great car chase, big explosions, Neeson barking “I STILL KNOW HOW TO KILL YOU, ASSHOLE”. I hope he makes a hundred of the movies, I hope this is his second career, just murdering his way through locations. Also the Black Swan style casting of Aidan Quinn as the shitty replacement Liam Neeson? Priceless.

- Sean Witzke, March 2011
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