Kanopy Recs

[dookeyXXX]

SWISS ARMY MAN




Quick thoughts:
1. Quite possibly the most elaborate dick & fart joke ever committed to film (or any other medium, for that matter). If Guinness had an entry for such a feat, this film would be the most serious of contenders.

2. If that doesn't work for you, then this is the most searingly absurd endictment of California's mental health care system I've ever seen.

3. Or, if you will, imagine Where the Wild Things Are crossed with a Monty Python skit gone horribly awry.

4. Or perhaps Robinson Crusoe as re-imagined by John Blutarsky.

5. And if none of that makes any sense, then you can always go with the comment I overheard the portly Southern gentleman, who attended the same screening I did, say on the way out of the theater: "That was a helluva movie. It was like Las Vegas on acid."

Whatever the case may be, I laughed my ass off more than once during the duration. Harry Potter deserves some sort of film award nomination for his role, that's for sure.

[bobz]

[B]SWISS ARMY MAN

Quick thoughts:
1. Quite possibly the most elaborate dick & fart joke ever committed to film (or any other medium, for that matter). If Guinness had an entry for such a feat, this film would be the most serious of contenders.

2. If that doesn't work for you, then this is the most searingly absurd endictment of California's mental health care system I've ever seen.

3. Or, if you will, imagine Where the Wild Things Are crossed with a Monty Python skit gone horribly awry.

4. Or perhaps Robinson Crusoe as re-imagined by John Blutarsky.

5. And if none of that makes any sense, then you can always go with the comment I overheard the portly Southern gentleman, who attended the same screening I did, say on the way out of the theater: "That was a helluva movie. It was like Las Vegas on acid."

Whatever the case may be, I laughed my ass off more than once during the duration. Harry Potter deserves some sort of film award nomination for his role, that's for sure.

Yes! Definitely not for everybody, but I loved it. If one insists on imposing reality on that movie, my take (SPOILERS I guess) is that the Paul Dano character was a messed up dude who liked to wander off into the woods from his home in the upscale hilly parts of Redwood City, and make stick figures and spin wild fantasies.

And furthermore, that (among his other problems) he'd watched too many Harry Potter movies. Yes, I think, in subtext that's just subtle enough to avoid needing permission or IP license, Swiss Army Man has Daniel Radcliffe playing some weirdo's warped desert island fantasy version of the prep school attired, magical Harry Potter.

Also perfect: That the film's final line of dialog is "What the fuck?!" And BTW, check out the movie's website.

[dookeyXXX]

I am eagerly anticipating The Daniels' new film Everything Everywhere All At Once...

[dookeyXXX]

LES GARCONS SAUVAGE (THE WILD BOYS)
This film definitely isn't for everybody.
Imagine a homoerotic and avant-core porn riff on The Island of Doctor Moreau and Lord of the Flies, teeming with overt phallic and yonic imagery and infused with surreal tweaks on the creation mythos, Pinocchio's Land of Toys/Pleasure Island, and Peter Pan's Lost Boys.
Oh, and a bejeweled god named TREVOR.

RIYL
Blancanieves; Fando and Lis; Jessica Forever

[dookeyXXX]

NEVER GONNA SNOW AGAIN
Delivering a beguiling slant on the "mysterious stranger" trope, this film follows the nimble fingered exploits of a Ukrainian masseuse as he tends to the needs of desperate and lonely suburban Polish housewives.
Brimming with cool, neon tinged imagery, it floats along in a strange, hypnotic manner and culminates in an enigmatic ending.

RIYL
Borgman; Kontrol; Jupiter's Moon

[dookeyXXX]

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE
Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell (best known for It Follows), this neon noir could easily be considered a blatant nod to Sir Alfred, and while it undoubtedly is, it is also heavily filtered through the skewed eye of Brian De Palma and the demented cerebral cortex of David Lynch.
Mixing twisted conspiracy theories with wacked-out urban legends and hobo linguistics, UTSL is a hypnotic, hallucinatory, and generally absurd romp through Los Angeles' angst ridden millennial underbelly. Fueled by cigarettes, ganja, day old pizza, booze, and an innocent, yet creepy lust for the ladies, our somewhat clueless, yet no less intrepid protagonist finds himself spiraling down a fucked-up rabbit hole, learning that pop music is fixed, rich people can do whatever the fuck they want, and paying rent on time is overrated.
Every time you think you know where the movie is going, it flips a bitch and heads in the opposite direction. Likewise, every time you start to feel that shit is getting lame, BAAAAAM!, shit gets real weird.
This film makes me want to move to L.A.
I also wish I'd seen it on the BIG screen in theaters.
Oh well.

RIYL
Blue Velvet; Body Double; Mulholland Drive; Blow Out; North By Northwest; Rear Window; Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (the BBC teleplay)

[dookeyXXX]

MUSEO
This 2018 gem is a wonderfully understated mash-up of both heist and road trip genres, with a wee bit of philosophy, history, and socio-political commentary sprinkled throughout for good measure. Oh and the rediscovery of a forgotten Mexican porn star.
The ending is killer, too.

RIYL
American Animals

[dookeyXXX]

DEAD PIGS
Cathy Yan's (Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) debut feature is a quirky ensemble piece taking place in Beijing. It harkens back to the quirky indie films coming out of America circa the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The story, following the intersecting lives of 5 central characters, touches upon class, family, greed, and the concept of both success and reinvention.

RIYL
Box of Moonlight; Girl Walks Into A Bar

[dookeyXXX]

REALITY
If you are unfamiliar with the films of Quentin Dupieux, suffice it to say that they are quirky. For example, his most well-known feature, Rubber, was about a sociopathic tire; his latest, Mandibles, is about a jumbo Tabanus Bovinus.
So, yeah, not your typical Hollywood fare. But his work is funny and thought provoking and often a bit mind-bending.
Reality is often an absurd, at times surreal skewering of the Hollywood film industry, from aspiring directors to megalomaniacal producers, and difficult directors. Or is it?
The excessive use of Philip Glass's "Music With Changing Parts" lends the film an eerie, quasi Giallo vibe, which serves as a wonderful counterpoint to the off-kilter humor.
This is a joyously head-spinning satire which also manages to poke fun at the director's own work.

RIYL
Holy Motors; Everything Everywhere All At Once; Timecrimes

[dookeyXXX]

OF HORSES AND MEN (2013)
Taking place in a small, rural Icelandic community, this film examines the relationship between the citizens and the wild horses surrounding them. Poignant, quirky, often funny, yet also darkly introspective and harsh; kind of just like the Icelandic landscape.





MID-AUGUST LUNCH (2008)
A low-key Italian slice-of-life story centered around a middle-aged man who gets saddled with three elderly ladies over a long holiday weekend. Plenty of food, wine, cigarettes, and personality clashes make for a warm-hearted film.

[dookeyXXX]

SAVE THE TIGER
This is a strange, yet compelling drama about a man whose American Dream is dissipating and he’ll go to extreme measures to keep it intact.
There is an over-arching theme about baseball, some PTSD trauma, and lots of riffs on morality.
Delivered in a slow, deliberate manner and anchored by Jack Lemmon’s steady performance (he won the Best Actor Oscar for this role), the film is riveting and thought provoking.
It also contains a scene which I am pretty sure Quentin Tarantino jacked and used in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

RIYL
The Swimmer; Electra Glide In Blue; The King of Marvin Gardens

[dookeyXXX]

THE FORGIVEN
This would make a good companion watch to Triangle of Sadness; entitled rich people behaving poorly is the running theme here.
Written/directed by John Michael McDonagh, the oft overlooked brother of Martin, this is a biting social commentary about privilege and the remnants of colonial excess.
Playing out like a snide noirish Shakespearean dramedy, it is anchored by some searing thespian turns from all involved and further buoyed by excellent pacing and a predictable, yet no less potent ending.




***Also streaming on Hulu

[dookeyXXX]

Quite a number of cool flicks lurking on Kanopy right now:

The Girl With All The Gifts
Nice tweak on the zombie genre. The novel it is based on is worth a read, too.


Cryptozoo
Very cool animated film about a zoo full of mythological beasts. Filled with intrigue and mayhem.


Swan Song
Udo Kier in a tour de force performance as a flamboyantly gay hairdresser in the Midwest.


Only God Forgives
Nicholas Winding Refn’s divisive follow-up to Drive is a twisted Oedipal tale of lust and violence.


Mandibles
Idiosyncratic writer/director Quentin Dupieux’s oddball stoner comedy about two goofs and their pet fly is cult brilliance. Think Dumb and Dumber, but waaaaay weirder.


A Touch of Sin
This film is bleak and violent, but also inescapably tense and unnerving. From the director of Ash Is The Purest White, it feels like a darker, edgier Tarantino film, but with an underlying socio/political message.

[dookeyXXX]

THE BRAND NEW TESTAMENT
Who knew that God was a misanthrope living in a 3-bedroom apartment in Brussels?
Apparently writer/director Jaco Van Dormeal did, as that’s the basic gist of his film.
To say any more would ruin the delicious absurdity of this dark comedy which owes no small debt to the likes of Brazil, Amelie, and L’Iceberg.

[dookeyXXX]

A PURE FORMALITY
Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, best known for Cinema Paradiso, this film is a bravura mash of giallo, gothic horror, and murder mystery.
Owing debts to Hitchcock, Argento, and Leone, it is teeming with all the cool camera tricks from Dutch tilts to claustrophobic close-ups and dizzying overhead shots. It’s moody, creepy, disorienting, and contains some solid thespian turns from Gerard Depardieu and Roman Polanski.
The ending is a bit old hat, but it is handled well and the preceding elements of the film are fantastic, so the let down of an oft used twist is an easy one to forgive.

[dookeyXXX]

Re: A PURE FORMALITY:

While I enjoy both Depardieu and Polanski’s acting, I find both men to be morally reprehensible in real life and fully understand anybody who wishes to boycott their work.

[dookeyXXX]

NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE

Hands down this is one of the greatest B-movie experiences of the last 40 years, barring Hell Comes To Frogtown.

This is pure gonzo grandeur.

I am too lazy to re -write a new review, but I wrote about it here 3 years ago: https://spencesez.blogspot.com/2020/...nd-risque.html

If you’re not into reading, peep the trailer:

[dookeyXXX]

NINA WU
I watched this slow-burn Chinese psychological drama the other night.
It’s part of the mini-wave of MeToo inspired thrillers that have popped up over the past few years. But unlike the pandering neo-exploitive Promising Young Woman, which gussied up a standard B-movie plot and pawned it off on the arthouse intelligentsia (who blindly ate it up as high art and pointed social commentary), NINA WU is a disorienting bit of subdued visceral melodrama that has a sucker punch ending that will stick with you long after viewing.

[dookeyXXX]

A BITTERSWEET LIFE
This is a fairly fantastic hitman-with-a-heart-of-gold-revenge thriller with nice doses of philosophical introspection thrown into the mix of melodrama and high violence.
The action scenes—predominantly fisticuffs and gun-fu—are bristling and taut. The whole story angle about loyalty and retribution is a little old-hat and familiar, but the ending is a blissful kick in the nuts.

[dookeyXXX]

BEASTS CLAWING AT STRAWS
This is a twisty and nasty little neon noir teeming with saps, thugs, and femme fatales. Told in non-linear fashion in a style similar to that which Quentin Tarantino made famous, it’s an engaging little dark comedy/mystery thriller.

RIYL
A Touch of Sin; Shanghai Triad; The Wild Goose Lake

[dookeyXXX]

SNOWFLAKE
This German action thriller with a metaphysical slant comes off like a collaboration between the Quentins Tarantino and Dupieux; it’s hyper violent and absurdist.
Borrowing more than a few pages from the 2006 films Ober (aka Waiter) and Stranger Than Fiction, it provides enough twists and turns to make the story about fate and destiny interesting and entertaining.

[Mike Pow]

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE
Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell (best known for It Follows), this neon noir could easily be considered a blatant nod to Sir Alfred, and while it undoubtedly is, it is also heavily filtered through the skewed eye of Brian De Palma and the demented cerebral cortex of David Lynch.
Mixing twisted conspiracy theories with wacked-out urban legends and hobo linguistics, UTSL is a hypnotic, hallucinatory, and generally absurd romp through Los Angeles' angst ridden millennial underbelly. Fueled by cigarettes, ganja, day old pizza, booze, and an innocent, yet creepy lust for the ladies, our somewhat clueless, yet no less intrepid protagonist finds himself spiraling down a fucked-up rabbit hole, learning that pop music is fixed, rich people can do whatever the fuck they want, and paying rent on time is overrated.
Every time you think you know where the movie is going, it flips a bitch and heads in the opposite direction. Likewise, every time you start to feel that shit is getting lame, BAAAAAM!, shit gets real weird.
This film makes me want to move to L.A.
I also wish I'd seen it on the BIG screen in theaters.
Oh well.

RIYL
Blue Velvet; Body Double; Mulholland Drive; Blow Out; North By Northwest; Rear Window; Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (the BBC teleplay)

Thanks for the breakdown and recommendation

Very enjoyable

The pop music explanation scene was excellent (best part of the movie for me)

Reminded me of the Teddy Perkins episode in Atlanta

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7629358/?ref_=ttep_ep6

There's something about Garfield I can't warm to though

[bobz]

I saw Under The Silver Lake a while ago. It's worthwhile as a style-over-substance spin on Mullholland Drive. But damn, when a film invites comparison to Mullholland, it's kind of condemned to underwhelm. Among other aspects of Mullholland Dr's greatness is that once you cut through its near-incomprehensibility, the movie actually makes sense. Whereas, after a certain point, I thought it was clear that UTSL's rabbit hole led nowhere rational. Despite being a pretty good ride.

(And thanks for the Too Young To Die rec; yeah, that was fun!)

[dookeyXXX]

I saw Under The Silver Lake a while ago. It's worthwhile as a style-over-substance spin on Mullholland Drive. But damn, when a film invites comparison to Mullholland, it's kind of condemned to underwhelm. Among other aspects of Mullholland Dr's greatness is that once you cut through its near-incomprehensibility, the movie actually makes sense. Whereas, after a certain point, I thought it was clear that UTSL's rabbit hole led nowhere rational. Despite being a pretty good ride.

(And thanks for the Too Young To Die rec; yeah, that was fun!)

I may have to re-visit MULLHOLLAND DRIVE one of these days.
I absolutely loathed that film when it was first released in theaters.



As for TOO YOUNG TO DIE? I dunno how I missed that when it was originally released. It may very well just be the second greatest schlocky B- Movie ever after HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN…

[bobz]

I was scanning the Newly Added Movies list on Kanopy, and saw, wait really???, DANGEROUS MEN. Wow, if you like bad movies you're in for a treat. Here's my review, recycled from years ago:


I had the pleasure of watching DANGEROUS MEN last night. It's sort of THE ROOM meets I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, though with more action than the former, and more entertaining (and less stomach-turning) than the latter. DANGEROUS MEN joins THE ROOM, TROLL 2, and BIRDEMIC in the canon of earnest, ineptly executed passion project films by inexperienced and clueless foreign-turned-American auteurs.

The director (and editor, musician, casting guy, etc etc), John Rad (like the other above-mentioned films other than BIRDEMIC, he used a pseudonym), a former propaganda videographer for the Shah of Iran (and now deceased), spent a couple of decades filming and editing this amazing piece of dreck.

I'll now lay out the plot for you (this isn't what I would call a SPOILER, because no one should come to DANGEROUS MEN for its storytelling): Loving couple is introduced; they're newly engaged, and they go to the beach to be extra special romantic. A couple of biker gang types decide to do some rape, but boyfriend kills one of them, remaining biker kills him, and then she kills other biker. Hitchhiking away from the scene, another guy tries to rape her, but she's too badass for him as well. She then decides to go missing and be a ruthless killer of assorted scumball men. Meanwhile, her brother, a cop, wants to find her and pursue the evil biker gang who it seems had something to do with her disappearance. Brother, in tracking them down, comes upon another attempted rape, and uses captured rapist to lead them to the ultimate bad biker guy for the film's final showdown.

Even though the original rapists are long since dead, and dearest sis has become an infamous serial killer.

In the final scene (right after an amazing chase sequence which manages to repeat about 90 seconds of itself, bad dialog included, oops), ultimate bad guy biker, while being chased by cop, (you know what, this one may qualify as a SPOILER, because it's really that stupid, so maybe skip to the next paragraph or whatever), takes a time-out to try to rape somebody.

So yeah, anyway, it's a pretty great terrible movie. Not as essential as THE ROOM (what is?), but so-bad-it's-good fans won't be disappointed.