--- Wah-Wah
Two films and Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy) is already typecast as the weird British kid who comes of age. It's only a matter of time before he grows up too much, but he's becoming a fine actor, Wah-Wah, a thoroughly British film, is also a thoroughly fun film. Yes, fun, despite the fact that his father (Gabriel Byrne) is the kind of alcoholic who not only pulls a gun on his son, but fires it. And yes, fun, even though his mother (Miranda Richardson) has a physics-defying stick up her ass, one that we see another man screwing around with while Ralph (Hoult) "sleeps" in the backseat of the car. It's a charming sort of evil, lavishly shot in any case, and one of those neccessary crimes, you know, the kind that keep the plot moving.
Emily Watson's powerhouse performance as the convention-shattering American (Ruby) who marries Ralph's father (the "shaker-upper" for those who are unfamiliar with the coming-of-age genre), that's what really keeps the film moving. A historical piece, set in the last days British rule in Swaziland, Wah-Wah is just a bunch of random noise and babble until Ruby, a real gem of a character, gives us a translation we can relate to. I never knew Watson could play such a vivacious part: Wah-Wah's real success comes from allowing her to.
Perhaps there's too much crammed into Wah-Wah's two hours: it does seem like a chaotic carousel, going around and around (where it stops, no one knows). But I wouldn't give up the shots of Carousel rehearsals, the brilliant South African landscape, or the quite moments of Ralph playing with his puppets. Well, okay, maybe I could do without the latter. The one flaw of Richard E. Grant's story and direction is that he has saddled almost all of his characters with endearing but unnecessary mannerisms, and while Aunt Gwen's (Julie Walters) constant "sun stroke" (a euphamism for inebriation) is hysterical, Ralph's facial spasms are inexplicable.
Then again, a film like Wah-Wah being more than another standard-issue coming of age . . . that's a bit inexplicable too. (Translation: Emily Watson.) But it finds charisma, grace, and some rare moments of beauty out in the desert, so here's to hobbly-jobbly breaking free of hodge-podge and making some damn jolly sense.
--- Flock of Dodos
“Flock of Dodos,” the first documentary to touch on the big Kansas debate between pompous evolutionists and shadily-backed Intelligent Designers, is a homegrown, low-budget affair that’s more often pleasing than irritating, but far from a finished product. Randy Olson, the native Kansas man behind this project, keeps a too-passive eye on the debate, ultimately eschewing sides to point out that the real issue is whether or not evolutionists can adapt (like the Dodo) to America’s need for “simple answers to complex questions.” Along the way, he paints a nice picture of the Red states as being peaceful debaters who just speak their unique common sense, but that side is as much a whitewash as the more polarized films that make southerners into fanatics and loons. Worse still, Olson’s balance is off, and the only evolutionists we see come across as being unhinged, unapproachable, and really, really pompous.
Olson also has the mistaken impression that he needs to clutter his narrative with graphic animations and in-jokes that could very well be straight out of “Super
Rabbit shit, that is. In his most lucid moment, he illustrates the biggest counterpoint to intelligent design out there: the clear presence of unintelligent design. Nothing is stupider than the rabbit’s digestive system, which ferments food in the anus and forces them to re-eat what they excrete to survive. As he and his “homeboy” watch a tape of their rabbit “totally doin’ it,” it strikes the audience as just how real this moment is. Away from all the cartoons and stoic interviews, Olson actually finds a way to be honestly entertaining.
For all his unwarranted dabbling and shoddy camera work, Olson’s documentary frequently hits on bright little moments like these, and while the movie feels disjointed as a whole, these individual scenes are worth mentioning. So is his overall point: these are people just like us, but with different beliefs, and if we simply look down on this so-called “other half” of
--- Lunacy
Lunacy, a Czech Republic interpretation of two Edgar Allen Poe short stories with a Marquis de Sade-type character (not too subtly called "The Marquis") lives up to its name. Erratic, often confusing, and filled with fits of meat-puppetry (stop-motion animated meat), Lunacy is a weird film, but far from the philosophical horror film it's billed as. Lunacy isn't even a horror film: aside from what we see happening to meat, we don't see anything happen to the characters, and the implications are a bit too cartoonish, caught in Jan Svankmajer's disinterested gaze. The only character who seems to fit is the protagonist, Jean Berlot (Pavel Liska), who lists across the screen like the camera itself. Because of his own idle nature, we can get swept up in what is happening to him, since he rarely does anything on his own. Unfortunately, the things that happen to him are too episodic to link together, and the heretical Church scene clashes with the mistaken burial scene, and even more so with the film's main narrative thrust in an insane asylum that is perhaps being run by a madman. Don't worry if that didn't make sense: Lunacy is meant to be crazy. It's just not mad enough.
William Tyler Smith is a strange person. As a writer, he explores the illogical emotion called love, watching a “perfect” relationship succumb to the lust of bigamy and the thrill of experimentation. But as a director, he keeps everything as logical as his protagonist’s demeanor: he talks a good game, but when it comes to exploring the exotic and the irrational, he’s as scripted and solid as a Showtime special. Kiss Me Again is nothing special: it’s tame, and it’s safe, and it’s boring.
One scene stands out, in which the married couple, looking for a way to spice their way out of a romantic rut, visits a house of couples to participate in some weird communal orgy. The whole scene runs like a carnival freak show, replete with weird angles, illusions, and a whole tray full of sex toys. This sequence is disturbing and excellent . . . and it doesn’t fit the rest of the movie at all. Does Smith want to show us deviants or to does he want to peel off that stereotype, to show the normalcy beneath our sexual urges. Does he want to show us that maybe monogamy isn’t for us, no matter how good we have it?
I couldn’t tell you. Kiss Me Again is a rough hodgepodge of scenes that dance around the edge of a touchy subject. The dance all too rarely gets erotic, and the dancers stay far from the flames of passion. Casting Darrell Hammond as the best friend is an act of desperation: yes, he makes Jeremy London look better (and he’s a dead ringer for Brendan Frasier in looks only), but not that much better. By the end of the film—as the threesome gets more complicated, tangled in heartstrings—everybody is in tears, but that’s just a poor makeup job. Good news for the ASPCA, I guess: no hearts were harmed in the making of this film.
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