250 Words or Less: Computer Chess (2013)

"Garbage in, garbage out," a character says near the end, talking about computer data but also so much more.  In its own warped, humble way, this comedy about a hacking competition in an anonymous hotel circa 1980 could be called "Origins of the 21st Century": an eerie, ultra-dry satire about attempting to reduce an irrational world to a sensible formula—and how strange it is for people to try to perfect artificial intelligence when the regular kind is hardly working out.  Computer algorithms are played off against human beings until the two start to mix, so machines refuse to behave while people fall into programming loops.  By shooting it all on ultra-cruddy, period-appropriate black and white videotape, director Andrew Bujalski has put up a wall that more or less guarantees it will only find a small audience, which is a pity.  Personally, I love it.  In an era when (my beloved) American indie cinema has been overrun with blandly quirky Little Miss Sunshine clones, it's a sign that the free-form daring of early Linklater and Todd Haynes is still alive and well.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

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Computer Chess has emerged from release-window purgatory onto Netflix Instant.  A cult following can't be far behind.

Clean Slates and the Cinema of Edgar Wright

Once, I was a train from Gatwick Airport to London, sitting across the aisle from a group of very amiable blokes.  I told them I was American, and as so often happens at home and abroad, the conversation turned to movies.  "You all make the best movies," one of them said, and he proceeded to name highlights from the blockbuster heyday of the 80s: Die Hard, Back to the Future, Robocop, Indiana Jones—films that, like it or not, represent a huge part of America's contribution to world cinema.  He finished his list and lamented, "We don't make anything like that here."  (I repaid the favor by telling him that Britain had produced the best rock music, and that I wished T. Rex and The Jam had caught on in the States.  Travelers, please note that this has proven to be a good way for Americans to break the ice in pubs).

Edgar Wright's "Three Flavours Trilogy"—Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and now The World's End, all co-written by star Simon Pegg—has played largely like an attempt to correct this, grafting genres associated with Hollywood or America onto British settings with a British sense of humor.  To oversimplify it a bit, Shaun was a tribute to George Romero; Fuzz was a tribute to the Bruckheimer mafia; and The World's End, about a small town invaded by body-snatchers, is a tribute to John Carpenter.  The invaders with glowing blue eyes are reminiscent of The Fog (intentionally, from what I hear), and fans of The Thing will thrill to a scene where everyone is accusing one another of being taken over, set to a decidedly Carpenter-esque minimalist synthesizer.  A huge part of the appeal of these films is that Wright is clearly a movie buff's director, more formally accomplished than Kevin Smith and more well-adjusted than Quentin Tarantino, prone to hosting screenings of Lubitsch classics or taking to social media to give a shout-out to obscure Brian De Palma gems.  That this trilogy of genre pastiches borrows its semi-official name from Krzysztof Kieslowski, replacing the colors of the French flag with the flavors of ice cream that cameo in the film, is a salute to middle-brow sensibilities (bless them), a testament to omnivorous cinephilia, and a reminder that in the grand tradition of British comedy, the smartest guys in the room are the best at being silly.

So far, word on the street/Facebook is that The World's End has pleasures to spare but is the weakest of the three.  On the one hand, this is understandable.  In terms of dramaturgy—that ugly, elegant science of moving characters from Point A to Point B as smoothly as possible—it's easily rougher than the other two.  Hot Fuzz in particular was some kind of miracle of comedic screenwriting, driving a complex plot forward, juggling characters, and piling on revelations while still having a good joke roughly every 30 seconds. The World's End is more of a series of repetitive loops, and the vibe of paranoia-as-comedy less developed than in its predecessors.  The World's End may be destined to be the Return of the Jedi of the series, a closing chapter liked by everyone but with few singling it out as their favorite.

That having been said, I would like to stick up for The World's End as not only more than Shaun of the Dead-lite, but also as a progression.  Formally, Wright continues to tinker: the opening scenes are a jerky barrage of sounds and images that reminded me of a vintage Public Enemy album.  But it's the treatment of Pegg's character in particular that goes deeper into emotional territory.  The bromance of Shaun of the Dead was a basic idea done exceptionally well.  The emotions in Hot Fuzz were rooted more in movie tropes than reality, but in exchange, the film had the most subversive, satirical writing of the series.  But the character of Gary King (Pegg), a middle-aged man pining for wild youth, feels downright naked, with a final reveal that should come as no surprise but is still startlingly sincere.

The last twenty years of mainstream comedy have shown no shortage of man-children who never grew up, but Gary is one of the select few—and the first in a long time—to be so potently tragic, chiefly because Pegg and Wright seem to understand how sad someone like Gary really is.  He's not made to seem cool in that loveable, mookish way that's so common; in fact, right down to his messy comb-over, Wright and Pegg go out of their way to make him look pathetic.  It's the interplay between both sides of screen: characters like Gary King are a fixture of entertainment, but real life Gary Kings are a mess.  The bizarro ending (another Carpenter staple), where Gary both appears cured and eerily resembles Sam Raimi's Darkman, represents the appropriate closing of an arc.  Not only has a character obsessed with the Past escaped to the Future, but the character with the most serious baggage of any Wright hero so far has escaped to a world of patent cinematic fantasy.  The World's End may be too messy by half, which is one reason why it's congealed better in my memory than it did on screen.  But it's fitting that this nostalgic farewell to a franchise takes such a thoughtful view of nostalgia, and that it ends by wiping Wright and Pegg's self-contained universe as clean as a blank slate.  After all, a blank slate is a beginning.  It makes me want to see what will come next.

250 Words or Less: Leviathan (2013)

In which the uneasy coexistence of man and nature is rendered in a stream of imagery the likes of which you've never seen before. It's not a "documentary" in the usual sense—in terms of cold hard facts, you won't walk away with any more than you brought in—but it's certainly a document: filmed on the Atlantic Ocean with a series of inventively-mounted waterproof mini-cameras, it opens with a quote from the Book of Job before taking the plunge, robbing you of your sense of space and direction and replacing it with very primal fear and awe.  (Gaze in wonder at the trailer above).  Watching the most stunning passages of Leviathan is like swimming in the open water, sticking your foot down, and realizing that the bottom is nowhere within reach, and one of the film's accomplishments is making the presence of people in this world seem as alien as anything else on screen. I'd love to see the techniques picked up by narrative filmmakers, but as it stands, this may be one of the best avant-garde films of the new decade.  It's a sensory journey through a world that both has a rigorous cycle and is chaotic as hell.  Sometimes, a reference to the Old Testament is all the narrative context you need. 

4 out of 5 stars. 

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Leviathan is in limbo between theaters and home video.  The blu-ray will probably be pretty bitchin'.

250 Words or Less: Spring Breakers (2013)

Every year there's a film that, for whatever reason (usually the stars), gets mainstream attention even though it's essentially a festival film. So when Harmony Korine's latest caught a wave of notoriety in American theaters after playing Venice, it could almost be taken as a prank: a film that looks like a crime romp where maybe, just maybe, Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens will make out, but really is an elliptical, self-reflexive nightmare of warped American values. But as the film entered its second half, two thoughts came to mind. First, the iconography of the all-American spring break doesn't need to be appropriated and exaggerated by provocateurs—actual footage on MTV is far scarier than Korine's film. And second, the intersection of our economic system, popular culture, and moral decrepitude has been examined better by artists subtle enough to not use guns as penises or name the religious character "Faith". But if better writing could help ward off the aire of obviousness, the film's point is made effectively by style: the bright pastels and trance-like editing are intoxicating (history written in neon), and the emphasis on appearances over psychology is a message in and of itself. What I walked away with most is that the Scarface theme is now played out. A more unsettling story, possibly hinted at by Korine, isn't that hard-partying college students who want to continue their materialist dream end up as violent criminals; it's that they end up in white-collar jobs. Now that would be creepy.  

3 out of 5 stars.

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Spring Breakers is now out on DVD.  It's really not that shocking.

250 Words or Less: The East (2013)

My love of scrappy outsiders who break into the American film industry through the back window has led to me following the films of Brit Marling probably out of proportion with their actual quality. For those who don't know, Marling was one of Hollywood's many disregarded aspiring actresses until she got fed up with the lower rungs and decided to create opportunities for herself, writing and starring in a series of indie-budget-friendly sci-fi films (Another Earth, Sound of My Voice) that all have imaginative concepts and problematic third acts. She's a compelling figure in the post-Darko Sundance-scape, and this, her latest film, even attracted the financial backing of Tony and Ridley Scott. But like the rest of her films, it feels both promising and unfinished: key sections near end are tin-earred or overplayed—I'm not sure she realizes how silly some of it is—and she has a habit of throwing in late-movie sex scenes that are neither necessary nor convincing. I'm still waiting for a really good movie from her. For the sake of scrappy outsiders everywhere, I'm sure she has it in her. 

2 out of 5 stars. 

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The East is currently playing in select theaters and enjoying a long run at that one arthouse in Palo Alto.