The Grouchy Editor

When the end credits began to scroll for the new documentary Project Nim, I rose from my seat to leave but found the aisle blocked by a young boy and his family.  I tapped the kid on his shoulder, made a slitting gesture across my throat, and said a single word to him:  “Dirty.”  The kid smiled, stood up to let me pass, and asked his parents to do likewise.

The kid and I had communicated like Nim Chimpsky, the “star” of Project Nim.  Nim, a chimpanzee born in captivity, was the subject of a famous – or infamous – scientific experiment that began in 1973 when a Columbia University behavioral psychologist and his students began a sort of English immersion project for Nim.  The idea was to place the chimp with a New York City family – husband, wife, kids and pets – and to raise the little fella exactly like a human infant.  The goal was to determine whether chimpanzees can learn language – not just symbols and memorization, but real grammatical communication.

Depending on whom you believe, the experiment did or did not go well.  After years living with the LaFarge family, Nim was transferred to a string of unpleasant new homes, including an animal medical research lab.

Project Nim is a remarkable movie.  It tells the sad story of Nim, certainly, but it also reveals a lot about the people in his world, including project leader Herbert Terrace, a man seemingly more interested in bedding female undergrads than in making good science and who, probably to his regret, allowed director James Marsh to interview him for this film.  There is very little humor in Project Nim, but the audience broke out in derisive laughter whenever the unctuous, clueless Terrace attempted to justify his self-centered behavior.

Some people love animals, and some do not.  I’d call myself a “dog person.”  I’m not all that crazy about other creatures, including cats, birds … and chimpanzees.  Face it:  Chimps grow monstrously strong, frighteningly aggressive and, as demonstrated in the movie, disturbingly horny.  Nim was no exception – he was no Old Yeller, and he wasn’t Bambi, either.

But when Nim is torn from his human environment and consigned to a lifetime of caged isolation, you have to be pretty cold-blooded not to feel for him.  One episode near the end of the film, when a former “family” member comes to visit Nim in his pen after years of absence, took me completely by surprise with its emotional power.

Oh, yeah.  You might be wondering about that business between the kid and me at the end of the movie; the boy who let me pass after I gestured at him and said, “Dirty.”  What was that about?  I could tell you, but I don’t want to.  You’ll have to see Project Nim to find out for yourself.        Grade:  A-

Director:  James Marsh  Release:  2011

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I’m guessing Hesher will look great in its promotional spots:  See zany Hesher, the long-haired, tattooed stoner, teach granny how to smoke a bong!  See Hesher freak out and hurl furniture, grills, and people into a swimming pool!  Watch as Hesher teaches dirty words to a little kid!

But here’s the problem:  People who buy tickets hoping to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the title character doing all of those wild-and-crazy things will get their wish, but they’ll probably be mildly disappointed, as well, because this movie wants nothing so much as to tug at the heartstrings, and as a mixture of comedy and drama, Hesher is a mess.  It’s an admirable, interesting misfire, but a misfire nonetheless.

The film has a cute premise.  Party animal Hesher meets 13-year-old TJ (Devin Brochu), invites himself into TJ’s home and life … and then refuses to leave.  This new arrangement does not bother TJ’s father (Rainn Wilson), a man so lost in grief over the car-accident death of his wife that everything escapes his notice, including the fact that he’s been staring glassy-eyed at Wild Kingdom on the TV screen for weeks.  TJ’s sweet-natured grandmother, played by Piper Laurie, takes an instant liking to her grandson’s new “best friend.”

Hesher turns out to be the anti-Mary Poppins for this family of three still reeling from the loss of the mother.  Rather than offer a spoonful of sugar, Hesher prescribes a bongful of weed for granny, and a crash course in arson for TJ.  That might sound amusing, but Hesher also tackles somber issues, like grief and schoolyard bullies, with clumsy shifts in tone.  It doesn’t help that 20-something Hesher’s “bond” with young TJ is less than convincing.  (Natalie Portman, cast against type as a bespectacled, accident-prone cashier, is surprisingly good.)

This mix of madcap stoner and mopey mourners might have looked good on paper (and in trailers), but Hesher is too often a kegger with flat beer.       Grade:  C+

Director:  Spencer Susser  Cast:  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Natalie Portman, Rainn Wilson, Piper Laurie, Devin Brochu, John Carroll Lynch, Brendan Hill  Release:  2011

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The last time I watched a film co-produced by Spain and Argentina, the result was one of the best pictures of the year – from any country.  That was in 2010, and the movie was the romantic thriller, The Secret in Their Eyes.

So when I walked into a theater a few nights ago to see another Spanish-Argentinean project, my expectations might have been too high.  Director Miguel Cohan’s No Return is intelligent, well-acted, and has an intriguing story … but it feels flat.

No Return depicts the consequences of a tragic car-bicycle accident.  Young Pablo is struck not once but twice – the second time fatally while he is tending to his broken bicycle on a street in Buenos Aires.  Like the spokes of the wheel on Pablo’s battered bike, the repercussions of the accident spread out in multiple directions.

Three families are affected:  Hit-and-run driver Matias (Martin Slipak) and his parents; the father (Federico Luppi) of the accident victim; and entertainer Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia), who is falsely accused of the crime.  As each group deals with the fallout from the accident, which becomes a media event, No Return is compelling – but not particularly moving.  I think this is the case because Cohan’s script asks the audience to invest emotionally in too many characters over a short period of time.

No Return is one of those films you are happy to have seen, but will probably not revisit.             Grade:  B

Director:  Miguel Cohan  Cast:  Leonardo Sbaraglia, Martin Slipak, Barbara Goenaga, Luis Machin, Ana Celentano, Arturo Goetz, Agustin Vazquez, Federico Luppi, Pedro Merlo  Release:  2010

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Tucker & Dale vs. Evil has some of the funniest sight gags I’ve seen in a long, long time.  Rookie director Eli Craig’s horror-comedy takes the redneck-slasher flick, hangs it upside down from a meat-hook, and invites us to laugh at the fallout.

Outside of a Three Stooges short, it’s probably not possible to make a movie with nonstop visual jokes, but that’s a shame because there are some doozies in this farce.  After watching Tucker and Dale do their thing, seeing Leatherface brandish a chainsaw will never again seem so threatening.  Alas, there is also bad news:  Tucker & Dale has a plot. 

Dale (Tyler Labine), one of our two hillbilly heroes, is fat and slow on the uptake, but blessed with a heart of gold.  He and buddy Tucker (Alan Tudyk) want nothing more than some peace and quiet on their vacation at Tucker’s woodland cabin.  When some college kids – airheads who’ve seen way too many movies – invade the boys’ West Virginia mountain retreat, we know nothing good will come of it.  There will be blood – just not in the ways you might think.

One of the college kids is super-sexy-smart Allison (Katrina Bowden), a psychology student, and Dale is instantly smitten.  If you’ve seen any Judd Apatow movie, you know exactly how this will turn out:  In the fantasy world that Hollywood regularly offers to teenage audiences, every slob gets his girl.

Tucker & Dale runs out of steam at about its midpoint, when plot gets in the way and the movie devolves into the same kind of silly slasher flick it has been lampooning so admirably.  My advice to you:  Whenever the story gets talky and the dialogue turns “serious,” saunter out to the lobby and buy some popcorn, or have a smoke in front of the theater.  Just try to be back in time for the sight gags.        Grade:  B-

Director:  Eli Craig  Cast:  Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, Philip Granger, Brandon Jay McLaren, Christie Laing, Chelan Simmons, Travis Nelson  Release:  2010

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James Wan’s haunted-house movie Insidious will put you on the edge of your seat. In fact, if you are like me the film will send you rocketing from your chair and crashing into the theater ceiling like a test pilot who’s accidentally pushed the ejection button.  That’s the good news.

The bad news is that, in addition to a skull fracture, you will likely acquire punctured ear drums, a ringing headache, and attention deficit disorder due to the DEAFENING sound effects Wan employs in conjunction with most of his “boo!” scenes.

Insidious, which insidiously apes the plot of Poltergeist, promises to deliver scares and it does, and that’s a simple rule of scary movies that so many of them, inexplicably, seem to forget.  Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman is correct when he says, “Insidious … has some of the most shivery and indelible images I’ve seen in any horror film in decades.”

But it’s a shame that I can’t honestly tell you whether my Flying Wallenda impersonations were due to Wan’s skilled filmmaking or to those shattering decibel levels.  At what point does a film cross the line from artful manipulation to physical assault?

The plot concerns a young couple (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) with three kids, one of whom mysteriously lapses into a coma.  When things that go bump in the night begin to plague the family, mom and dad pack everyone up and move to a new house.  But the freakish phenomena move with them.

Like most good horror flicks, Insidious is a director’s movie.  The actors are only required to look alternately worried and terrified.  The script might or might not get in the way of the fun.  Insidious screenwriter Leigh Whannell, to my way of thinking, attempts to explain things better left unexplained.  I mean, isn’t it frightening enough to learn that ghosts actually exist and are out to get you, without bringing in the obligatory “expert” (Lin Shaye channeling ghosts, a la Zelda Rubinstein in Poltergeist) to explain their cockamamie motivations?         Grade:  B

Director:  James Wan  Cast:  Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins, Andrew Astor, Lin Shaye, Barbara Hershey, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson  Release:  2011

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“Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.” – Woody Allen

Someone must have mentioned Allen’s quote to “Smith,” the sexually confused hero of the science-fiction/sex romp Kaboom, a movie as screwed up as its young protagonist.

Kaboom is what I’m calling a mumbo-jumbo movie, with equal parts claptrap and hogwash.  It chronicles the sexual misadventures of Smith as all manner of inexplicable, spooky things keep happening to him.  A mumbo-jumbo movie deserves a mumbo-jumbo review, so here you go:

Mumbo:  Watching this film is a bit like watching soft-core pornography:  The filmmakers realized that some sort of story was needed to fill in the gaps between sex scenes, so they tossed in every element from old episodes of The X-Files – murderous cults, voodoo, the paranormal, and … oh yes, the end of the world.

Jumbo:  Lots of skin on display here.  If you are a “boob man,” you will be happy.  If you are a “butt man,” you will be disappointed (see my low grade).  If you are gay or female, you might be pleased.  But everyone will, or should, barf at what passes for a plot.

Mumbo:  The direction is very ambitious, what with having to put on film things like hallucinations, dreams, and the Earth blowing up.  Too bad the special effects budget was nowhere near as ambitious.

Jumbo:  The young women in this movie are all condescending, world-weary, and sarcastic.  The young men are all childlike, stupid, or childlike and stupid.  Sound familiar?  Yes, indeed:  It’s yet another Judd Apatow movie.

Mumbo Jumbo:  There were two quotes in the film that I liked:  Stella – “It’s a well-known fact that dreams are just your brains taking a dump at the end of the day.  They don’t mean anything.”

And:  Smith – “You had something better to do?” Stella – “Uh, sucking a fart out of a dead seagull’s ass?”

There is also a scene in which a dumb, blond surfer dude attempts to fellate himself.  I guess he discovered a way to top Woody Allen, tripling his chances for a Saturday-night date.              Grade:  D+

Director:  Gregg Araki  Cast:  Thomas Dekker, Haley Bennett, Juno Temple, James Duval, Andy Fischer-Price, Nicole LaLiberte, Kelly Lynch,  Roxane Mesquida, Christine Nguyen, Chris Zylka  Release:  2011

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Weird can be good.  As in some David Lynch movies.  Or when Lars von Trier goes on an angry rampage.  Or when David Cronenberg films … whatever the hell it is that David Cronenberg films.

But weird can also be frustrating.  As in, “I don’t understand this story, and it doesn’t seem as though the director does, either.”  Greek filmmaker Giorgos Lanthimos might grasp the meaning of his quirky drama Dogtooth quite well, but its lack of plot and back story make it the kind of film you might enjoy once, but probably not twice.

Here’s what we do learn in Lanthimos’ story:  An unorthodox (to put it mildly) family of five lives in an isolated yet comfortable home.  Father rules with an iron fist, mother enables father, and the three kids – two teenage girls and their brother – are not allowed contact with the outside world – ever.  Mom and dad “home-school” the kids, keeping them in line by feeding them an endless supply of elaborate fantasies, buttressed by the harsh reality that father does not spare the rod.

I suppose this dysfunctional clan is meant as an allegory of the modern family, or as a commentary on some warped aspect of Greek society, but it doesn’t really matter because all we really care about is this:  What manner of weirdness will we witness next from these odd, odd people?

There is a certain perverse enjoyment in watching them.  How will they celebrate the parents’ anniversary?  When the sisters begin sexual relations with each other, how long before their brother joins in?  Who is easier to train, the family dog or the kids?  Dogtooth is never dull.

Lanthimos has said he didn’t want to overly explain things to the audience with this movie.  That’s fine, but was there anything to explain?       Grade:  B-

Director:  Giorgos Lanthimos  Cast:  Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, Hristos Passalis, Anna Kalaitzidou, Alexander Voulgaris  Release:  2009

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