Tusk
In 2010, I had the chance to interview writer/director Kevin Smith. The proposed subject was Smith’s SModcasts – comic podcasts co-hosted by Smith and his buddy Scott Mosier – but I had other ideas. I knew Smith, a filmmaker most known for his juvenile comedies, was putting the finishing touches on his first horror film, Red State, and I was giddy to find out more about that.
Smith told me, “For years I’ve called myself a filmmaker, but it’s not really true. Really I just make Kevin Smith Movies. I’m at that stage where I could make a Kevin Smith Movie with my eyes closed. Let me see if I can make another movie.”
Too few people saw Red State, a flawed but fascinating film that boasted an absolutely mesmerizing performance by Tarantino favorite Michael Parks, but Smith knew he had something great in this actor. Wisely, when the filmmaker returned to horror with this year’s Tusk, he did so with Parks in tow.
Though Tusk is a surreal, utterly bizarre horror comedy, it is without question Smith’s most personal work as a filmmaker. The film follows a podcaster (Justin Long) who travels to an isolated cabin in Canada to record conversations with a recluse (Parks). The podcaster hopes to bring a good story of a weirdo back for the next show, but this story proves a little too weird.
The basic idea, in fact, comes from one of the actual SModcasts. Searching online, Smith found a letter from a man seeking a lodger, and he and Mosier read it aloud and mocked the man and giggled – the general MO for the show. But somewhere in all that, Smith found the story of man losing his humanity.
Yes, Tusk is a comic riff on The Human Centipede. It’s also an insightful kind of stress dream, so close to home for Smith that, even with all its utter ludicrousness, it feels almost confessional.
Once again, the greatest strength in the film is a hypnotic performance by Parks as the old seafarer with nefarious motives. He’s magnificent, and Long’s work is strongest when the two share the screen.
Smith’s tone shifts wildly from absurd comedy to real terror, but given the film’s insane premise, the approach works because nothing is ever what you expect. Like Johnny Depp as a French Canadian Inspector Clouseau.
There is no film quite like Tusk, certainly not in Smith’s arsenal, which, I suppose, means this is not a Kevin Smith Movie. And yet, there’s more Smith in this film than in anything else he’s made.
This Is Where I Leave You
by Christie Robb
You’ve probably seen it before: a broken man forced by circumstance to return to his family home and reconnect with the life he had before, somehow, it all went awry. But you probably haven’t seen it with such enormous fake boobs.
This Is Where I Leave You is as familiar and unchallenging as a bowl of chicken soup. Shawn Levy’s adaptation of the book by Jonathan Tropper places the spotlight on Jason Bateman’s Judd, a sad-sack who actually sits down for a breath and watches while his boss and his wife are cheating on him. While couch surfing and growing out his obligatory beard of depression, he receives a phone call from his sister (Tina Fey) informing him that his father has died. His last request: that the kids sit shiva together for a week.
The family gathers with attendant significant others and kidlets and are encouraged by their oversharing, breast-enhanced mom (Jane Fonda), to let it all hang out and really get into the grief.
Like the bowl of chicken soup, you know exactly what you are going to get when you start. Family brawls. Run-ins with old loves. Finding dad’s secret stash of weed… You can ease into a nap worry-free. You’ll be able to figure out what happened before you dig the sleep crusties out of your eye creases.
The ensemble cast works to provide a little spice to an otherwise bland dramedy. Adam Driver (Girls) is great as the black sheep baby of the family and steals every scene that he’s in with a manic, fresh delivery and moments of puppy dog eyed sincerity. His interactions with the rabbi (Ben Schwartz from Parks and Recreation) who cannot shake his childhood nickname, Boner, are particularly delightful. But the talent mostly drowns in the soppy sentimentality and same-ness of it all.
I’m not saying the flick isn’t worth seeing. Just watch it at home nestled in a blanket, coughing out a lung with a bottle of NyQuil at your side.
The Trip to Italy
by George Wolf
Yes, they do the Michael Caine bit again.
If this news brings a knowing smile to your face, you’ll have a fine time taking The Trip to Italy.
For the uninitiated, the “bit” involves Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon trying to one-up each other in a hilarious battle of Michael Caine impressions. It was a highlight of the 2011 film The Trip, which chronicled their travels to some of the finer restaurants of Northern England. Playing fictionalized versions of themselves, they engaged in joyously witty banter during a stint as food critics for the UK paper The Observer.
As you might guess from its title, the sequel takes the pair on a similar assignment in Italy, where they try to keep tabs on their respective acting careers while enjoying the picturesque locales and tempting cuisine of the region. And, of course, bickering about everything from Alanis Morrisette’s music to Jude Law’s hair.
Director Michael Winterbottom is back at the helm, with good instincts for what this film needs to equal, and often better, the first go round. The simple novelty of the premise may be gone, but there is a subtle deepening of character development, and an all-around breezy warmth that is contagious.
But, those are just tasty side dishes supporting the main course: two likable chaps given plenty of room to match razor-sharp wits. They display a wonderful chemistry, and complete command over the process of turning droll, deadpan humor into some uproarious moments.
Sporting plenty of laughter, wonderful scenery and delectable looking dishes, don’t be shocked if you leave The Trip to Italy with an urge to call your travel agent.
The Zero Theorem
By Christie Robb
Director Terry Gilliam questions the meaning of life in The Zero Theorem, but instead of exploring the idea via Monty Python antics, Gilliam approaches the topic in a more Brazil-like satire.
Imagine Times Square mixed with CNN’s scrolling text and Facebook ads– a colorful chaos of noise, both aural and visual.
This is the world inhabited by Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz), a monkish data cruncher who speaks in the royal we. Qohen longs to escape the life of a cubical drone and work from home. He doesn’t want to miss a call-back. Years ago, someone cold called him dangling his personal reason for being. But Qohen dropped the receiver and the line disconnected.
Management, embodied by Matt Damon, grants his request, putting him on a notorious burnout project, the Zero Theorem, its goal to prove that everything adds up to nothing. If Qohen’s project succeeds, Management will help him get his call.
Sidetracked by Management’s constant, unrealistic deadlines, his former supervisor-turned-computer-repairman (David Thewlis), a company-provided A.I. shrink (Tilda Swinton), Management’s teenage hacker son Bob (Lucas Hedges), and a manic pixie call girl (Mélanie Thierry), Qohen is wooed back toward the little pleasures he’d abandoned.
Zero Theorem is an often beautiful, somewhat heavy-handed film that explores the extremes of hedonism and asceticism, the consequences of living among scads of information and the distractions of virtual reality. Studded with allegory and stuffed with zany Gilliam details that can only be fully explored in subsequent viewings (including a delightful ad for the Church of Batman the Redeemer), it derails a bit in the last act, but fans of Gilliam’s dystopian flicks will find much to enjoy.
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