The Grouchy Editor

The people who made Troll 2 – a 1990 horror flick often called the worst movie since Ed Wood directed Plan 9 from Outer Space – were apparently a few tokens short at the troll-booth.

Michael Stephenson, child star of Troll 2, has now directed Best Worst Movie, a fascinating probe into the power of celebrity, both real and imagined.  Stephenson’s documentary examines the forces and people that propelled Troll 2 from straight-to-HBO joke into a major event at midnight screenings and memorabilia shows.  The documentary is an endless parade of loons, imbeciles, boneheads, knuckleheads, and delusional boobs.  I honestly can’t tell you who’s crazier, the fans or the moviemakers, so I’ll drop a few quotes and let you decide.

George Hardy is the star of both Troll 2 and Stephenson’s documentary.  Good-natured, goofy, and game-for-anything, Hardy is now an Alabama dentist who skyrocketed to cult-movie superstar status at conventions and screenings of “the worst movie ever made.”  Says one fan about George’s entrance at a screening:  “You would have thought that Robert De Niro had come into the building.”

Says George’s mother of her son’s acting talent:  “Let’s say he’s no Cary Grant.”

Says Claudio Fragasso, the proud, temperamental, and Italian director of Troll 2:  “I don’t make movies to be praised by critics.  Troll 2 is a film that examines many serious and important issues – like eating, living, and dying.   People want to eat this family.”

Says stuffed-animal lover and Troll 2 actor Don Packard about his experience at the original movie’s casting call:  “I was in the mental hospital at the University of Utah, and they gave me days off to go out.  I went there.”  Packard explains his state of mind during filming:  “I smoked an enormous amount of pot then to stay sane.  It was a terrible experience making that movie.  I remember there was a little kid there [Stephenson], a little Mormon kid who was really a pain in the ass and he was a star, and I wanted to kill him.”

Says Troll 2 screenwriter Rossella Drudi, explaining why her movie trolls are all vegetarian:  “At that point in my life, I had many friends who’d all become vegetarians, and it pissed me off.”

Says Margo Prey, who played Hardy’s wife and Stephenson’s mother:  “You compare our movie to a Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart movie, and it fits in.  Because our movie was all about people, and the experiences those people were experiencing, just as Casablanca and those movies are about people and the experiences they are experiencing.”

Says Robert Ormsby, who played Stephenson’s grandfather:  “Mostly I’ve wasted my life.  More or less I’ve frittered my life away, but then what else is there to do with a life but fritter it away?”

Says Fragasso to George:  “You were a dog, and you are a dog.”

Says Fragasso about the fans at a recent Troll 2 screening:  “These people are crazy.  It’s not normal.”

At times I found myself laughing out loud at these oddballs; at other times I thought the film might be an elaborate hoax (thanks a lot, Casey Affleck).  One critic calls Best Worst Movie “touching.”  I call it “disturbing.”  But I also call it “very funny” and “charming.”  It’s enough to drive me nuts.        Grade:  B+

Director:  Michael Stephenson  Featuring:  George Hardy, Michael Stephenson, Darren Ewing, Jason Steadman, Jason Wright, Margo Prey, Connie Young, Robert Ormsby, Don Packard  Release:  2010

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It’s nigh impossible to review Client 9, the new documentary about Eliot Spitzer, without taking a personal position on the ex-governor of New York, so here is mine: I think Spitzer was a breath of fresh air in American politics, a hardnosed attorney general and then governor who had the balls to take on big banking, Wall Street, and crooked politicians.  I think he was taken down by political enemies over a personal indiscretion, and the country is now in worse shape because of it.

I also think Spitzer is egocentric, a bit naïve, and probably less interested in serving the public than his own private interests.  He is an annoying motor-mouth on his new CNN show, Parker Spitzer, and he was in large part responsible for his own political downfall.

Client 9, a fresh take on what I thought was a stale story, reintroduces most of the players in this tawdry saga.  Here they all are:  Ashley Dupre, the prostitute who became Spitzer’s Monica Lewinsky; Joe Bruno, Hank Greenberg, Roger Stone, and Ken Langone – New York pols, businessmen and, judging by this movie, major-league assholes.  Director Alex Gibney’s documentary makes it clear that Spitzer’s biggest mistake was offending these people and, as one man points out in the film, “not playing well with others.”  Spitzer himself, perhaps with a bit of hubris, compares his tumble to Greek tragedy.

Performance artist Karen Finley makes an astute observation in the film:  “We want our political people to be God, and maybe that’s the biggest problem for us.  He’s a human being, and he’s not God.  This isn’t just a national narrative, but it’s an ancient narrative that happened and has to repeat itself into our culture.”

Maybe Spitzer’s comparison to Greek tragedy is not so far-fetched.  It’s sad to see the former Sheriff of Wall Street reduced to just one more talking head on cable.  And it’s dispiriting to see Dupre flirting on TV with Geraldo Rivera and penning gibberish for the New York Post, and to watch Greenberg, Bruno, Langone, and Stone all gloat over Spitzer’s ruined career.  Wall Street is still sick, and what we desperately need is a good guy.  Someone like the Sheriff of Wall Street.         Grade:  B+

Director:  Alex Gibney  Featuring:  Eliot Spitzer, Joseph Bruno, Hank Greenberg, Roger Stone, Ken Langone, Cecil Suwal, Hulbert Waldroup  Release:  2010

                                 Stone                                                                                 Langone

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                                 Dupre

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It’s hard to imagine anything more terrifying than being buried alive.  It’s a legitimate fear because unlike, say, meeting Freddy Krueger in a bad dream, premature burial is grounded in reality.  According to Wikipedia, George Washington so feared being mistakenly interred that he arranged to have his burial deferred until 12 days after his death.  Over the centuries, this type of horrific error was not uncommon.

Not to miss out on exploiting anything unspeakable, movies and TV are replete with stories depicting premature burial, from The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (“Final Escape,” 1964), to The Vanishing (1988), to Buried, now playing in a theater near you.  And because this Ryan Reynolds showcase takes place in another waking nightmare, the Iraq war zone, Buried plays on even more nerves.

Reynolds portrays Paul Conroy, a truck-driving contractor in Iraq.  After his convoy is ambushed, Conroy wakes up in a wooden box, presumably six feet under.  He learns that he’s been kidnapped (“one of the only functioning businesses over here [Iraq],” we are told) and deposited belowground by terrorists demanding a ransom.  The entire 94-minute movie takes place inside his coffin – and that presents a challenge for director Rodrigo Cortes.  The horror of Conroy’s situation is obvious, but how to generate suspense from the situation?  Through a cell phone, of course.

Cortes builds some tension, but only to a degree.  Aside from one sequence involving an unwelcome “visitor” to Conroy’s tomb, I did not experience what I’d call fear.  Discomfort, yes.   Claustrophobic anxiety, you betcha.  But fear?  Not really.          Grade:  B-

Director:  Rodrigo Cortes  Cast:  Ryan Reynolds  Release:  2010

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Monsters?  What monsters?

When this low-budget sci-fi flick opens in theaters later this month, I predict audiences will fall into one of two categories – and neither group will be happy. Group 1 will comprise viewers upset that the movie fails to live up to its scary title.  The promos for Monsters sure make it look like another War of the Worlds.  It isn’t.

There are aliens in the film, but if you run to the concession stand, you’ll miss them.  There is also suspense in the movie – but the suspense comes from wondering when the suspense will begin.

Monsters is an odd film, but not boring, and its promising beginning had me falling into Group 2:  viewers hoping for an original take on a stale premise (the aliens are here!).  But that promising beginning refuses to end (45 minutes expire before anything “happens”).  Thus, we spend lots of time with the lead characters, Andrew and Samantha, but they aren’t terribly interesting people.   Andrew is a photojournalist who is coerced into escorting the boss’s daughter, Samantha, through a Mexican “infected zone,” an area south of the border where aliens are sequestered by the government.  It is refreshing that – for once – a potential couple in a Hollywood movie is more curious than antagonistic about each other.  But this getting-to-know-you phase is lengthy and has zero suspense.  Maybe, I hoped, Monster’s climax would reward its audience’s patience.  It doesn’t.

With its obvious allusions to illegal immigration – there is an imposing wall keeping the aliens in Mexico, and out of the U.S. – Monsters makes a mild attempt at social commentary.  Says Andrew when the pair first spots The Great Wall of Texas:  “It’s different looking at America from the outside.  When you get home it’s so easy to forget all of this … in our, like, perfect, suburban homes.”  Would the conclusion of Monsters make a profound political statement?  Or might we finally witness all hell breaking loose?

Alas, the movie is what it is, a low-budget (reportedly $15,000) mishmash; part science fiction, part romance, and part social statement.  Of that stew, the only thing that stands out is the budget.  I suppose I could cut newbie director Gareth Edwards some slack for making his film with such limited resources but, hey, a ticket to Monsters cost me the same as a ticket to The Social Network.  So I won’t.   Grade:  C

Director:  Gareth Edwards  Cast:  Whitney Able, Scoot McNairy  Release:  2010

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“This brilliantly entertaining and emotionally wrenching movie,” says The New Yorker’s David Denby, “… is a movie that is absolutely emblematic of its time and place.”

I guess I can agree with the last part of Denby’s appraisal.  The Social Network is nothing if not timely.  No one questions the impact of the Internet in general, and Facebook in particular, on the world as we know it.  But does it necessarily follow that David Fincher’s movie about the rise of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is “brilliantly entertaining and emotionally wrenching”?

The Social Network is never dull; it has that going for it.  If you are 19, in college, and have big-time entrepreneurial dreams, you’ll probably love this movie.  For the rest of us, the film is primarily a voyeuristic character study and an opportunity to judge a big shot.  Who can resist having an opinion on the world’s youngest (26) billionaire?

A recent article in Entertainment Weekly portrays Social Network screenwriter extraordinaire Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) as almost apologetic for his script’s depiction of Zuckerberg.  In the story, Sorkin says, “I feel bad.  I – I wanna buy him [the real Zuckerberg] a beer.”

But despite all the media speculation about Zuckerberg’s reaction (or lack thereof) to his negative portrayal in Social Network, I think Sorkin’s beer money should to go to Zuckerberg antagonists Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.  As written by Sorkin, these two privileged WASPs are even less sympathetic than the arrogant-but-gutsy Zuckerberg.  When the Winklevoss twins claim “theft of intellectual property,” I had two reactions:  Do these pampered boys know how to spell “intellectual”?  And, will someone please explain how any of these college kids could claim “rights” to a concept that was – wasn’t it? – basically a rip-off of two existing sites, MySpace and Friendster?

None of this power grabbing makes for particularly gripping cinema.  It’s interesting, but no more than that.  It’s natural to be curious about how such a young man became so rich so fast.  And I’ll have to concede that the final shot, in which Zuckerberg the billionaire boy wonder is revealed as no different than the millions of lonely-hearts who frequent Facebook, is touching.  It’s a nod to the finale of Citizen Kane, but a 26-year-old man-child pining for the girl who dumped him is no burning Rosebud.          Grade:  B

Director:  David Fincher  Cast:  Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Rooney Mara, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Dakota Johnson  Release:  2010 

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The last time I was really fooled by a movie – by that I mean having my socks blown off, folded, and replaced in my bureau drawer – was in 1999, when writer-director M. Night Shyamalan gave us The Sixth Sense.   Shyamalan followed that ingenious thriller with a string of duds and, although I should know better by now, I continue to hope that someday he will rediscover his old magic.  That’s why I had (dwindling) hopes for Devil, the new horror film not directed by Shyamalan, but produced by him and based on his story.

I give up.  Devil does have a few nice moments, but those come courtesy not of the script but of director John Erick Dowdle, who manages to deliver a few jolts in the movie’s interesting locale:  a cramped office-building elevator in which five people are trapped.  One of the five is the devil – or so we are told in a lame narrative device.

One by one, the members of this little group are bumped off.  Whodunit?  Which of them is the devil?  This setup presents a storytelling challenge, because anyone who has ever read Agatha Christie, or seen more than a few films like this one, will probably anticipate Shyamalan’s obligatory “twist.”

What we are left with is yet another uninspired Shyamalan movie, a 30-minute Twilight Zone episode stretched out to feature-film length.  That’s not good enough, not from the man who gave us The Sixth Sense.  Shyamalan is either unwilling or unable to recapture that old magic, and so, like I said earlier, I give up.       Grade:  C

Director:  John Erick Dowdle  Cast:  Chris Messina, Logan Marshall-Green, Jenny O’Hara, Bojana Novakovic, Bokeem Woodbine, Geoffrey Arend, Jacob Vargas, Matt Craven, Joshua Peace, Caroline Dhavernas  Release:  2010

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