comedy

THE LAST ONE FOR THE ROAD: the party never ends

by
Photo caption: Filippo Scotti (center front) in THE LAST ONE FOR THE ROAD. Courtesy of Music Box Films.

In the genial Italian comedy The Last One for the Road, we get to meet two cheerful reprobates, whose only ambition is for their next drink. On the downside of middle age, Carlobianchi (Sergio Romano) and Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla) employ their wily charms to cadge free drinks from a bachelorette party and even impersonate a team of architects expert in historical preservation. Bill Clinton said he represented the folks who “work hard, follow the rules and pay their taxes“; Carlobianchi and Dori are not those people.

Carlobianchi and Dori have a close friend returning home after decades abroad, and they resolve to meet him at the airport. Because they’ve never been to any airports in the province of Venice, this precipitates a meandering road trip to find the right one. While crashing a college graduation party, the two meet a straitlaced architecture grad student Giulio (Filippo Scotti), and take him along.

Giulio protests that he has an important academic presentation the next day, but Carlobianchi and Dori insist on dragging him along on their hazy mission. Giulio really does need to loosen up, he’s blowing it with the young woman he likes by being just too uptight. Will the two old slackers succeed in debauching him? The road trip evolves into a semi-voluntary kidnapping. 

Sergio Romano and Pierpaolo Capovilla in THE LAST ONE FOR THE ROAD. Courtesy of Music Box Films.

The lengths that Carlobiachi and Dori will go to get another drink are funny; so is Giulio’s insistence that he is disembarking from their tour, despite never getting out of their car and calling an Uber, which any grown ass adult would do to “escape”.

The Last Round for the Road is a fun comic road trip, but there’s more here than it seems. The film begins with a factory worker’s entire work life rewarded with a Rolex, followed by a glimpse of how little that luxury watch really means to him. The industry of Carlobianchi and Dori’s old buddy Genio in masterminding a heist is not rewarded. Giulio’s passion for architecture and his academic discipline will surely pay off in professional success, but he takes notice that Carlobianchi and Dori, as aimless and irresponsible as they are, are enjoying a stress-free life. The party never ends.

The Last One for the Road, the second feature for director and co-writer Francesco Sossai, opens tomorrow at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles and releases more widely next weekend.

GONDOLA: funny, sweet, imaginative – and silent

by
Photo caption: GONDOLA Courtesy of Frameline.

This charming comedy Gondola is the work of a unique filmmaker, German writer-director Veit Helmer, who has been making dialogue-free films in Central Asian nations for a decade. A gondola links two mountainsides in rural Georgia, and the two female gondola operators fall in love as they pass each other high above the valley.

It’s remarkable how Helmer is able to pack so many story elements into a film without dialogue. (I also love Helmer’s The Bra, which I tagged as just your average silent Azerbaijani comedy.) Gondola is ever funny, sweet and imaginative.

I screened Gondola for the 2024 Frameline film festival. Gondola can be streamed for free from kanopy and can be rented inexpensively from Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube.

THE DRAMA: the darkest romantic comedy I’ve ever seen

by
Photo caption: Zendaya and Robert Pattinson in THE DRAMA. Courtesy of A24.

In The Drama, the darkest romantic comedy I’ve ever seen, Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) are getting married in a week.  They’re out with their best friend couple, finalizing the wedding’s catering and wine menu, when the four, in their cups, play a game that changes everything.

Each of the four undertakes to share the worst thing they’ve ever done.  Emma goes last, and confesses to something shocking.  This is not something that can be explained away as a youthful indiscretion.  It is something that calls Emma’s very sanity and humanity into question. The friends are horrified, but Charlie is rocked with the possibility that his adorable bride-to-be is a dangerous psychopath.  

Wedding week continues, with the couple going through all the banal tasks – reviewing the wedding photographer’s picture list, approving the flowers, meeting the DJ, etc. All while Charlie is more and more terrified of Emma.  

Charlie, not strong of character to begin with, starts to vibrant with stress and then decompensates into a human puddle. Emma, on the other hand, is just trying to get past her embarrassment until she plunges into terror that her very worst secret is going public. Believe me, this really IS a romantic comedy, but there are elements of psychological thriller along the way.

Both Pattinson and Zendaya are excellent as two people trying to cling to situations that may not be savable. Zendaya is just so impressive – a multi-platform superstar who started making Spiderman movies at 21 and still is choosing thoughtful, interesting work like this and Challengers. Other fine performances include:

  • Mamoudou Athie, whom I just saw as a menacing criminal in Wardriver, as Charlie’s very grounded best buddy;
  • Alana Haim, reversing the goodhearted charisma of her character in Licorice Pizza, as the friend hiding her inner malice;
  • Hailey Gates, hilarious as Charlie’s assistant Mischa, whose talents do not include connecting the dots.

The Drama is the work of writer-director Kristofffer Borgli, who also created the brilliant and utterly original comedy Dream Scenario. It’s in theaters now.

FACKHAM HALL: silly, low-brow, and that’s okay

by
Photo caption: Thomasin McKenzie, Katherin Waterston, Damian Lewis and Emma Laird in FACKHAM HALL. Courtesy of Bleecker Street.

Fackham Hall is a parody of the beloved Downton Abbey franchise, which has many aspects which can be mocked. The humor is generally low-brow, as you can see from the photo below. At its silliest, it’s still mostly funny, and the jokes are rapid-fire. Look away from the screen for even a a second, and you risk missing a sight gag in the background. Think Airplane!.

Ben Radcliffe (with erection) and Thomasin McKenzie in FACKHAM HALL. Courtesy of Bleecker Street.

Fackham Hall does a good job of mocking Downton Abbey’s fundamental premises, that the owners are preoccupied with keeping the estate in the family, even with the tangles of 800-year-old inheritance law, and with an obsolete business model – and, of course, the ridiculous privilege bestowed upon rich twits by meritless birthright.

Damian Lewis, Katharine Waterston and Thomasin McKenzie are very good as the aristocratic owners and Ben Radcliffe is very good as the new Downstairs hall boy.

I usually don’t write about a movie’s publicity campaign, but it included a blurb from Fackham Hall’s own screenwriter Jimmy Carr, “The funniest film I have written”, and the declaration, “From the producers who watched the first two seasons of Downton Abbey“.

After seeing the trailer, I decided that I could wait to stream Fackham Hall at home. But, now that I have, I think it’s actually a BETTER movie than Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. Fackham Hall is free on HBO Max and rentable from other VOD platforms.

HUMAN RESOURCES: Iago with a sick sense of humor

by
Pedro De Tavira (center) in HUMAN RESOURCES. Courtesy of Cinequest.

In the dark, dark Argentinian comedy Human Resources, Gabriel Lynch (Pedro De Tavira) is an alienated office worker, in an absurdly alienating workplace. Gabriel is a low-level supervisor on an anonymous lower floor of a corporate hive with too many layers of management and an oppressive, top-down culture. It’s also oversexed, with a carousel of Inappropriate office liaisons. And, we’ll soon see, is shockingly tolerant of what we would see as the most horrifying workplace violence.

Gabriel, an Iago with a sick sense of humor, begins a ruthless, unhinged campaign against those who offend him. Alienation leaks out in how her treats everyone. Mischievous, mean-spirited and completely unashamed, he’s very fun to watch. And, as venal as Gabriel is, he is matched, step-for-step, by Veronica from Finance (Juana Viale).

Around the 41-minute mark, Gabriel makes his grievance explicit (followed by a great drone shot)

“I’ve lived like the secret son of a king for a long time, waiting for a courtier to rescue me. Of course, nobody rescued me. Nobody rescues anybody.”

Human Resources is the creation of writer-director Jesús Magaña Vázquez. I’ve rarely seen a more cynical comedy.

Last year’s Cinequest hosted the US premiere of Human Resources, which I highlighted in my Best of Cinequest. Human Resources is now streaming on Hulu. There are many recent movies with a similar title; make sure you’re watching the 2023 Recursos Humanos directed by Magana and starring Pedro De Tavira.

I love the Spanish language trailer, even without English subtitles:

MY NEIGHBOR ADOLF: more than a match of wits

by
Photo caption: Bill Hayman and Udo Kier in MY NEIGHBOR ADOLF. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group.

In the wry fable My Neighbor Adolf, the chess master Polsky (David Hayman) has lost all his family in the Holocaust. Consumed by grief and bitterness, he lives the life of a misanthropic recluse in a remote South American countryside. Polsky is rocked when the long-vacant house next door becomes occupied by a mysterious German (the piercing-eyed Ugo Kier). Polsky becomes convinced that the new neighbor is Adolf Hitler himself. To convince skeptical authorities of his theory, Polsky must get past his terror and loathing to personally engage with the neighbor. A battle of wits between two strong-willed men ensues.

The 75-year-old Scottish actor Bill Hayman is excellent as Polsky, capturing both his vulnerability from residual trauma and the determination summoned to overcome it.

My Neighbor Adolf is the career finale for 81-year-old German actor Ugo Kier, who died in November. Kier proved that one can have a prolific career (275 IMDb credits) as a character actor in both art films and cult movies. He worked with directors like Werner Rainier Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Lars Von Trier, and in Hollywood films like Johnny Mneumonic, My Own Private Idaho, Armageddon, Halloween and Ace Venture: Pet Detective. His visage, scarier as he aged, worked well in horror movies. and he did many, beginning with Jim Morrisey’s Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula.

My Neighbor Adolf, the work of Russian-born Israeli filmmaker Leon Prudovsky, was my favorite film at the 2023 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. It opens theatrically in the US this weekend.

THE MASTERMIND: when selfishness exceeds talent

by
Photo caption: Josh O’Connor in THE MASTERMIND. Courtesy of MUBI.

In Kelly Reichardt’s dark comedy The Mastermind, a slacker steals valuable paintings from a museum in suburban New England in 1970. But The Mastermind is less of a heist film than a character study of a man with little character.

James Blaine Mooney (Josh O’Connor) is James to his wife and parents and J.B. to his friends. His guiding value is selfishness. With a degree in the arts, he is an occasional cabinet-maker who lets his hardworking wife (Alana Haim) support his family with a real job, while he sponges off his mom (Hope Davis). Instead of working, J.B. spends his time fantasizing how to make money without working. He lands on a scheme to rob the local art museum and fence the paintings.

He is smart enough to get the paintings out of the museum and hide the loot. But then his own character flaws begin to betray him. Having watched many crime movies, we all know that any criminal conspiracy is only as strong as its weakest link. But J.B. has employed three untrustworthy low lifes as crime partners. Of course, J.B. is too unreliable himself to recognize reliability in anyone else. And then The Mastermind follows J.B. as he tries to avoid the consequences of his choices – and his flight becomes a consequence in and of itself.

What makes this a comedy? The running joke is that J.B. never makes the responsible, prudent choice throughout the movie, always taking what he sees as the easy path, regardless of morality or loyalty.

Usually, a movie audience roots for the heist to be successful. Here, we don’t sympathize with the museum, which doesn’t value its collection enough to invest in even the most basic security. But we don’t care about J.B. either, because he is a shit who only needs the money so he doesn’t have to get a job. We do care about other people in J.B.s life, and he ruins the lives of his wife and family, puts at risk his dear friends and his own sons, fleeces his mother, and surely humiliates his father.

Josh O’Connor is very good as a man who never misses a chance to think only of himself. I would recommend another film with a heist element, La Chimera, where O’Connor plays a more complex character.

Fine actors all, Davis, Haim, Bill Camp, Gaby Hoffman and John Magaro are perfect in supporting roles. Hoffman is especially strong as an old friend who recognizes how dangerous J.B.’s affable charm really is. Davis has an inspired moment when she breaks a corn cob in half – and then quickly assesses which half has moire kernels,

Writer-director Reichardt is an acclaimed indie filmmaker who usually makes languorous, observational movies and gets excellent performances out of actors like Michele Williams, Lily Gladstone and Jared Harris. Her Wendy and Lucy is a masterpiece. There is more humor (the quiet, sly kind) and much, much more plot in The Mastermind than in Reichardt’s other works. I keep waiting for Reichardt to make another Wendy and Lucy, which is probably as unfair as waiting for Orson Welles to make another Citizen Kane.

Reichardt, who was only six years old in 1970, completely nails the verisimilitude of the time and place.

The very best thing about The Mastermind is the original music by Rob Mazurek, usually a solitary jazzy cornet or drums. The Mastermind is Mazurek’s first feature film score, but his Wikipedia page details an impressive and varied career as a musical artist.

Bottom line: The Mastermind is an exceptionally well-made film about a guy who we wouldn’t like to know in real life, but who ultimately gets his just desserts.

THE BALTIMORONS: vulnerability, recovery, good-hearted laughs

by
Photo caption: Liz Larsen and Michael Strassner in THE BALTIMORONS. Courtesy of IFC.

Here’s the perfect film for the family to watch on Thanksgiving Weekend (after the littlest kids have gone to bed). In the goodhearted and witty comedy The Baltimorons, a cracked tooth sends a guy to an emergency dentist and launches them into a nighttime adventure through Baltimore that could result in romance. It’s a funny movie about second chances.

Each of them faces a very problematic invitations. Cliff (Michael Strassner) has been sober for a few months, but he hasn’t found work. His lack of resources and his failed suicide attempt have left him in an unhealthy power imbalance with his girlfriend. He’s got to choose between his promised appearance at the girlfriend’s family holiday gathering and the chance to perform again at a pop-up comedy show organized by his buddies. Problem is, he is terrified that he can’t be funny without drinking.

The dentist Didi (Liz Larsen), in contrast, has a strong business and owns a nice home. But she’s personally reeling from her divorce, which has left her lonely and gashed a hole in her confidence. Didi is suffering the humiliation of a courtesy invite to the Christmas party hosted by her ex-husband and his new wife. So, we have two talented people in moment pf vulnerability and recovery. An impounded car sends them out together, and comic situations ensue.

What happens is funny, but The Baltimorons succeeds because of its humanity – we really care about Cliff and Didi.

Cliff and Didi would make an unlikely romantic pairing. He’s already in a serious relationship, after all. She is significantly older, and more well-educated. She’s highly functional, and he’s a floundering goof.

The Baltimorons reflects the sharp comic sensibility of writer-director Jay Duplass. With his brother Mark, Duplass wrote and directed Baghead, Cyrus and Jeff Who Lives at Home, and has since been busy directing/producing in television and acting (Transparent, Lynn Shelton’s Outside In). This is the first feature he has directed since 2012. At its world premiere, The Baltimorons won the Best Narrative Feature award at SXSW.

I saw The Baltimorons at its third public screening, at the SLO Film Fest with Jay Duplass in attendance. It won the SLO Film Fest’s Best of Fest. It’s now available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and Fandango.

PEACOCK: a chameleon, lost

by
Photo caption: Albrecht Schuch in PEACOCK. Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories.

In the droll and absurd comedy Peacock, Matthias (Albrecht Schuch of All Quiet on the Western Front) works in a most unusual companion service; he gets paid for jobs like masquerading as a client’s fictional partner. Matthias has so perfected being a chameleon that he has lost all sense of himself. This disquiets his wife and colleagues, and, when the vengeful ex-husband of a client terrorizes him, Mattias’ world starts to unravel.

Albrecht Schuch in PEACOCK. Courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories.

If you like Ruben Ostland’s work (Force Majeure, The Square, Triangle of Sadness), you’ll like Peacock. In fact, there’s a scene in Peacock that borrows A LOT from the chimp impersonator scene in The Square.

Austrian director Bernhard Wenger won a prize at Venice, where Peacock was also nominated for Best Film in the Critic’s Week.

I screened Peacock for NashFilm. It’s being shown at six Laemmle theaters in LA this Wednesday.

THE FANTASTIC GOLEM AFFAIRS: absurd, raunchy and funny

by
Javier Botet and Bray Efe in THE FANTASTIC GOLEM AFFAIRS. Courtesy of Gluon Media.

The Spanish comedy The Fantastic Golem Affairs is unlike any other movie you’re likely to see this year, and the absurdity starts in the opening scene. After a night of partying, the pudgy slacker Juan (Bray Efe) and his best buddie David (David Menendez) are goofing around on the roof of Juan’s Madrid high-rise apartment building. David accidentally falls off and plunges to the roof of a car parked many stories below. That reveals that David is made of ceramic, as he shatters into hundreds of shards.

While still in a state of shock, Juan is annoyed by a shady car insurance agent, his late friend’s obnoxious and venal lover, apathetic cops and a woman with an outrageous computer dating profile. But he is obsessed by the mystery of a ceramic man, and keeps on the investigative trail until he stumbles on an unworldly conspiracy rooted in his own family. Along the way, a bizarre freak accident keeps recurring, killing people that he encounters during his investigation.

It’s been accurately written that there is magical realism in The Fantastic Golem Affairs, but it’s not the sweet, mystical kind in, say Like Water for Chocolate – The Fantastic Golem Affairs is bawdy and in-your-face.

The playfully, irreverent tone strongly reminds me of Pedro Almodovar’s early work (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, High Heels and Kika) and his VERY early work (Pepi, Luci, Born and Other Girlds Like Mom). Indeed, one of the characters observes, “This is like a Spanish movie from the 90s“. The Fantastic Golem Affairs is not as riotous as early Almodovar, but it adds that magical realism and much more absurdism.

Javier Botet in THE FANTASTIC GOLEM AFFAIRS. Courtesy of Gluon Media.

The Fantastic Golem Affairs is highly imaginative work of Spanish writer-directors Juan Gonzalez and Nando Martinez, who call themselves Burnin’ Percebes. They hit us with the absurdity of the shattering ceramic man right at the beginning, juxtaposed with the peppy music underneath the opening credits. The music combines with an often static camera, long shots, and colorfully retro sets that are unabashedly cheap. This is a zany, raunchy movie with some mild body horror.

[Gratuitous digression: I’m always proud to point out when I actually get a joke in Spanish. The directors’ pseudonym is Burnin’ Percebes, and percebes is Spanish for gooseneck barnacle, a hideously ugly (Google it) and delicious shellfish from Northern Spain. They are dangerous to harvest from oceanside cliffs, and are accordingly expensive – about ten times the price of a regular tapa. Of course, The Movie Gourmet himself has enjoyed percebes in San Sebastian.]

The Fantastic Golem Affairs is opening in theaters, including LA’s Alamo Drafthouse.