comedy

THE LAST VIKING: hidden loot amidst the deluded

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Photo caption: Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas in THE LAST VIKING. Courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.

In The Last Viking, this year’s dark comedy from Anders Thomas Jensen (Riders of Justice), Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is a bank robber who has served his time and now wants to spend his looted treasure. Just before his capture Anker had handed his loot to his severely mentally ill brother Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen). to hide. Unfortunately, while Anker has been in prison, Manfred has decompensated, now resides in a psychiatric hospital and may not even remember where he stashed it.

Manfred lives in his own alternative reality, sometimes believing himself to be a Viking and sometimes John Lennon. After getting briefed on Manfred’s disassociative disorder from the oddball psychiatrist Lothar (Lar Brygmann), Anker breaks Manfred out of the hospital and heads off to their childhood home, now occupied by the new owners, who operate a vacation rental.

Mads Mikkelsen in THE LAST VIKING. Courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.

The house is familiar, but the setting is weird because the host couple (Sofie Grabol,and Soren Malling), bitter from career disappointments, each have their own delusions. Things get weirder when Lothar shows up with two other mental patients who also think they are Beatles. A particularly vicious former crime partner of Anker’s wants to steal the loot, so there’s an element of crime thriller amongst all the silliness.

Anders Thomas Jensen’s movies, as funny as they are, are populated by characters whose personalities have been shaped by traumas. That’s the case here, and Anker and Manfred share a fearsome secret from their childhood.

Mikkelsen and Lie Kaas are excellent in their roles. Lars Brygmann and Sofie Grabol stand out among the supporting cast.

A dark comedy about mental illness? You bet, and The Last Viking works because everybody has their delusions, even if they’re not diagnosed. The Last Viking is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV and YouTube. Tomorrow, I’ll write about five more Jensen dark comedies, including his masterpiece.

I WANT YOUR SEX: good, naughty fun

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Photo caption: Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in I WANT YOUR SEX. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

In Gregg Araki’s raucous sex comedy I Want Your Sex, Eliot (Cooper Hoffman) is a schlub of a recent college grad, who seems to be surprised to find even entry level employment. His first real job is as a gofer for the trendy celebrity artist Erika (Olivia Wilde), who wastes no time in putting Eliot ill-at-ease. Erika is forceful and dominant, and she enjoys the power of making others uncomfortable . Although Erika is way out of Eliot’s league, she shockingly invites him to have sex with her, and the two begin a nominally consensual fling.

Erika is his boss, rich and beautiful enough to attract any sex partner. Eliot is broke and frustrated by a co-called girlfriend who finds sex distasteful and doesn’t really like him. Despite the inappropriate power dynamic, Eliot becomes an enthusiastic participant, even when the sex is humiliating and degrading. There’s no reciprocity, but it works for him. Eliot finds and embraces his submissive side.

Rarely has a movie character surrendered more agency than Elliot. Whatever Eliot has gleaned from his college experience, it is not confidence. In every way, Eliot is the wildebeest to Erika’s rapacious lioness.

But Erika’s egotism is toxic, and her cruelty is boundless. Erika’s demands become more and more extreme, Eliot’s addiction to her becomes more unhealthy and Erika finally blows up all his relationships, leaving Eliot in a puddle of vulnerability – all the way to one hilarious epilogue, and then another.

Gregg Araki is a playful filmmaker, and I Want Your Sex is a very funny movie. Most of the humor comes from Erika’s behavior being so outrageous, Elliot’s submission being so clearly unwise, and the sex so continuously in-your-face. I loved Araki’s digs at the Gen Z proclivity to overthink and angst their way OUT of having sex. There’s even a witty homage to Sunset Boulevard.

Araki is best-known for his brilliant and searing masterpiece, the pioneering queer coming of age film Mysterious Skin. In his Mysterious Skin, White Bird in a Blizzard, and I Want Your Sex, Araki explores the ambiguity of sex; he makes his audiences cringe at the inappropriateness of sexual awakenings that his protagonists embrace. And, as in I Want Your Sex and his trippy sex romp Kaboom, Araki enjoys filling ninety minutes with non-stop sex – all in good, naughty fun.

Yehuda Duenyas is credited as the intimacy coordinator, and they must have been the busiest member of the crew.

I Want Your Sex wouldn’t work without Olivia Wilde’s fully committed performance as a sexually insatiable, narcissistic sociopath.. Cooper Hoffman is perfect as a character who matter-of-factually describes himself as a “weak man”. As in Licorice Pizza, he’s good as a guy who bobs along on the currents of others.

The supporting cast is very good, especially Chase Sui Wonders as Eliot’s best friend Apple and Mason Gooding as Elliot’s workplace pal Zap, who is infinitely more suave and commonsensical than Elliot. Daveed Diggs is fun as Erika’s supercilious assistant and craven co-conspirator Viktor. Charli XCX is funny as Eliot’s supposed girlfriend Minerva. Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville make cameos as police detectives,

Gen Z can watch I Want Your Sex instead of having actual sex. The rest of us can just enjoy the ribald laughs. I Want Your Sex releases into theaters this weekend.

MADDIE’S SECRET: a bracingly inventive comic melodrama

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Photo caption: Kate Berlant and John Early in MADDIE’S SECRET. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Writer-director John Early’s comic melodrama Maddie’s Secret is inventive, sometimes bracingly so. Early also stars as the kind and modest Maddie, who lives with her adoring husband Jake (Eric Rahill). Maddie is a passionate foodie who doesn’t get to show off her culinary genius in her job as a dishwasher at a content mill, churning out celebrity cooking shows for social media’s unquenchable appetite. A personal video goes viral, and Maddie’s company propels her into celebrity chefdom.

Thing is, Maddie has been hiding her light under a bushel because she has an eating disorder with hurtful body image issues. Now, she is trapped into the role of a public-facing Internet sensation who is expected to spend her life celebrating food. All the time, she is desperately hiding her disorder from everyone, including Jake and her best friend Deena (Kate Berlant). That’s a conflict-laden situation that could launch a comedy, a drama, or, in the case of Maddie’s Secret, both.

Here’s the comedy – Maddie’s Secret is an homage to the television disease-of-the-week movies of the late 20th Century, with all the tropes of melodrama, including the overwrought line readings. It also savagely sends up LA’s content creation industry. This aspect of Maddie’s Secret is broadly funny; after all, Maddie’s Secret was written by a comic, almost all of the cast are comedians and the protagonist is played by an actor in drag.

John Early and Eric Rahill in MADDIE’S SECRET. Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

But Early mocks the over-earnestness of the issue movie genre while taking the issue itself seriously. Maddie really is suffering from a real disorder. Maddie’s Secret never soft-pedals the physical and emotional consequences of Maddie’s bulimia. Just as heart-breaking are the impacts to Maddie’s closest relationships as she lies to cover it all up. (Indeed, in a panic, she tells Jake the worst possible lie to mask her purging.) There are moments in Maddie’s Secret that are as funny as a heart attack – literally.

Early’s real triumph here is in balancing the tones of the movie – somehow the silliness of the send-up doesn’t interfere with the melodrama.

Early is also excellent in portraying Maddie’s decent soul and damaged psyche, her hidden pain and self-loathing. Berlant and Rahill are especially good as Deena and Jake. So is Kristen Johnson as Maddie’s nightmarish mother Beverlee.

Maddie’s Secret opens this weekend at theaters including the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco, Alamo Drafthouse in Mountain View, and, in LA, Laemmle’s Monica Film Center, Town Center 5, Glendale and Tasveer Film Center.

THE LAST ONE FOR THE ROAD: the party never ends

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.