dark comedy

Thursday at Cinequest: THE HAMSTERS

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LOS HAMSTERS
LOS HAMSTERS

Don’t miss the most overlooked nugget at Cinequest 2015. The Hamsters (Los Hamsters) is a delightfully dark social satire about a riotously dysfunctional Tijuana family. The dad, mom and two teenagers are going to such lengths to hide secrets from each other that they are completely oblivious to the drama in the others lives. In his first narrative feature, writer-director Gil Gonzalez has crafted a comedy that is completely character-driven, compressed into a very fun 71 minutes.

This family is in the upper middle class and the dad is desperately trying to stay there, the mom is denying any signs to the contrary and the kids are too spoiled and self-absorbed to notice any odd behavior by the parents. The acting is strong, especially by Angel Norzagaray, who plays the weary but driven, hangdog dad.

And here’s a bonus – Los Hamsters was filmed in Tijuana, and it’s great for a US audience to see this city as it is seen by its residents, not by its visitors.

Los Hamsters plays Cinequest today again on March 7 at Camera 12. See you around the fest. You can find my festival coverage, including both features and movie recommendations, on my Cinequest page. Follow me on Twitter for the very latest.

Cinequest: LOS HAMSTERS

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LOS HAMSTERS
LOS HAMSTERS

The Hamsters (Los Hamsters) is a delightfully dark social satire about a riotously dysfunctional Tijuana family. The dad, mom and two teenagers are going to such lengths to hide secrets from each other that they are completely oblivious to the drama in the others lives. In his first narrative feature, writer-director Gil Gonzalez has crafted a comedy that is completely character-driven, compressed into a very fun 71 minutes.

This family is in the upper middle class and the dad is desperately trying to stay there, the mom is denying any signs to the contrary and the kids are too spoiled and self-absorbed to notice any odd behavior by the parents. The acting is strong, especially by Angel Norzagaray, who plays the weary but driven, hangdog dad.

And here’s a bonus – Los Hamsters was filmed in Tijuana, and it’s great for a US audience to see this city as it is seen by its residents, not by its visitors.

Los Hamsters will have its North American premiere on February 27 at the California Theatre and plays again on March 5 and 7 at Camera 12.

DVD/Stream of the Week: A COFFEE IN BERLIN – slacker minus coffee equals plenty of laughs

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A COFFEE IN BERLIN (OH BOY)
A COFFEE IN BERLIN (OH BOY)

Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin hits every note perfectly. It’s the debut feature for writer-director Jan Ole Gerster, a talented filmmaker we’ll be hearing from again.

Jan Ole Gerster
Jan Ole Gerster

We see a slacker moving from encounter to encounter in a series of vignettes. Gerster has created a warm-hearted but lost character who needs to connect with others – but sabotages his every opportunity. He has no apparent long term goals, and even his short term goal of getting some coffee is frustrated.

As the main character (Tom Schilling) wanders through contemporary Berlin, A Coffee in Berlin demonstrates an outstanding sense of place, especially in a dawn montage near the end of the film. The soundtrack is also excellent – the understated music complements each scene remarkably well.

I saw A Coffee in Berlin (then titled Oh Boy) at Cinequest 2013 and singled it out as one of the three most wholly original films in the festival and as one of my favorite movie-going experiences of the year. A Coffee in Berlin was snagged for the festival by Cinequest’s film scout extraordinaire Charlie Cockey. A Coffee in Berlin is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

LISTEN UP PHILIP: maddening self-absorption can be funny

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Elisabeth Moss and Jason Schwartzman in LISTEN UP PHILIP
Elisabeth Moss and Jason Schwartzman in LISTEN UP PHILIP

The dark indie comedy Listen Up Philip features perhaps the most self-involved character in cinema (and that’s really saying something).   The young novelist Philip Lewis Friedman (Jason Schwartzman) believes that his writing talent entitles him to simmer in permanent rage and to crap on every one in his path.  To the credit of writer-director Alex Ross Perry, this supremely unsympathetic character is very fun to watch.  (And, unlike in most mumblecore movies, Philips’s self-absorption is not accepted as an aspect of normal life, but treated as appallingly aberrant and cruel.)

Philip is living with his photographer girlfriend (Elisabeth Moss), whose career is beginning to eclipse his.  It’s pretty clear that their home will soon be tossed on Philip’s trail of relationship carnage.

Just when Philip might have to face the natural consequences of his behavior, he meets the WORST POSSIBLE mentor – an older famous novelist (Jonathan Pryce).  The older guy, who has his own collection of relationship wreckage, is ready to enable, nurture and magnify all of Philip’s worst tendencies.

Perry cleverly moves the story’s focus from one character to another and adds a hilarious voiceover narration that parodies the tone of many modern American novels.  Be sure to watch for the faux book covers during the final credits.

Listen Up Philip is smart and funny, but plenty dark.   It’s available streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

THE ONE I LOVE: a relationship enters the Twilight Zone

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Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass in THE ONE I LOVE
Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass in THE ONE I LOVE

Opening tomorrow, The One I Love is one of the year’s most original stories – a romance, dark comedy and sci-fi fable rolled into one successful movie.  Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss play a couple in that place in their relationship where quirks have become annoying instead of endearing, some trust issues have emerged and the two are just generally misfiring.  Their couples therapist recommends a weekend at an idyllic, isolated vacation cottage, which also has a second (presumably unoccupied) guest house.  The beautiful setting is enhanced by a bottle of wine and a reefer, and the desired rekindling of romance and intimacy occurs.  So everything goes as we would expect for this first nine minutes of the movie, and then – WOW – a major plot development that involves the guest house.

As soon as one of the characters explicitly references TV’s The Twilight Zone, the story becomes what would have been a perfect episode in that Rod Steiger series.  Screenwriter Justin Lader pulls off a What’s Gonna Happen Next? story that has its moments of creepy thriller and madcap comedy.  But, at its heart, the story explores these questions:  what is it about our partners that keeps us in or drives us out of a relationship?  How do we stay in love with someone who has changed from who we fell in love with?  Or who hasn’t become the person we had projected?  The One I Love is only 91 minutes, so the tension and the thoughtfulness can slowly build while keeping us on the edges of our seats.

Moss and Duplass are simply remarkable here – these are two great performances.

MINOR SPOILER ALERT: Both Duplass and Moss play other characters in this movie – and they excel at creating subtle differences in the characters that are revealing, thought-provoking and scary.

A Coffee in Berlin: slacker minus coffee equals plenty of laughs

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A COFFEE IN BERLIN (OH BOY)
A COFFEE IN BERLIN (OH BOY)

Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy A Coffee in Berlin hits every note perfectly.  Opening tomorrow, it’s the debut feature for writer-director Jan Ole Gerster, a talented filmmaker we’ll be hearing from again.

Jan Ole Gerster
Jan Ole Gerster

We see a slacker moving from encounter to encounter in a series of vignettes.  Gerster has created a warm-hearted but lost character who needs to connect with others – but sabotages his every opportunity.  He has no apparent long term goals, and even his short term goal of getting some coffee is frustrated.

As the main character (Tom Schilling) wanders through contemporary Berlin, A Coffee in Berlin demonstrates an outstanding sense of place, especially in a dawn montage near the end of the film. The soundtrack is also excellent – the understated music complements each scene remarkably well.

I saw A Coffee in Berlin (then titled Oh Boy) at Cinequest 2013 and singled it out as one of the three most wholly original films in the festival and as one of my favorite movie-going experiences of the year.  A Coffee in Berlin was snagged for the festival by Cinequest’s film scout extraordinaire Charlie Cockey.

Cinequest: Heavenly Shift

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Heavenly Shift1The dark Hungarian comedy Heavenly Shift (Isteni mûszak) is deliriously funny.  A rogue ambulance crew gets kickbacks from a shady funeral director if the patient dies en route to the hospital.  Said undertaker also uses his coffin inventory for his human smuggling ring, and he makes his payoffs in a Chinese restaurant.  The ambulance driver is addicted to laughing gas and scolds everyone about the difference between samurai and ninja swords.  Then there’s the addict who lives in the subway and repeatedly slashes herself so she can jump the responding ambulance crew and steal their morphine.

The laughs are enhanced by spaghetti western music, complete with showdown-in-the-main-street power chords for dramatic confrontations.  The cast delivers wonderfully dead pan performances, especially Roland Rába (Question in Details in the 2011 Cinequest).  There’s an especially messy emergency tracheotomy in a produce market and a hysterically madcap runaway ambulance sequence near the end.

Now this is a DARK comedy – and if you don’t find the likes of Killer Joe, The Guard, Bernie and Headhunters really funny, then this may not be for you.  For cynics like me, the more noir the better, and I think Heavenly Shift is a freaking riot.

Heavenly Shift’s North American Premiere is March 7 at Cinequest, and it plays again on March 12 and 14.

White Reindeer: wickedly deadpan for the Holidays

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white reindeer“Autumn is my stripper name.  My real name is Fantasia.”

I think that’s pretty funny. If you think so, too, you should watch White Reindeer on VOD. In this dark and subversive comedy, we meet a comfortable suburbanite who enjoys going overboard at Christmastime; suddenly, her husband is killed and she plunges into shock, grief and various manifestations of depression. Believe it or not, this is a comedy, and what makes it so funny is her deadpan reaction to each of the secondary indignities she undergoes. As she tries to cope with her loss, she learns some unexpected things about her late husband and winds up partying with strippers, dabbling in shoplifting and visiting a neighbors’ creepy swingers mixer. It’s all subversively funny.

White Reindeer is available streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Sundance Now, GooglePlay and XBOX.

Nancy, Please: an unhealthy (and unfunny) obsession

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NANCY, PLEASE

In the dark comedy Nancy, Please, a neurotic and feckless Yale grad student has just moved in with his new girlfriend and realizes that he has left his copy of Little Dorrit at his old digs. His former female roommate is both hostile and passive aggressive, and she won’t return it.  It’s a big deal, because he is up against a thesis deadline and his notes are annotated in the book.

But the central joke in the movie is that losing the book shouldn’t be THAT big a deal.  Sure, she’s being a jerk, but it’s pretty hard to imagine that he can’t reconstruct his notes, as he is advised by everyone else in his life except one friend who has the excuse of being drunk.  The grad student can’t let it go, making this molehill into a mountain that obstructs his progress on any and all fronts.  As he becomes more and more emotionally paralyzed, his academic career, his new relationship and even the walls of his new apartment disintegrate.  And a dose of maturity would solve the whole thing. 

I did chuckle when his girlfriend, alarmed by his escalating obsession, announces “I can’t support this any more.  I withdraw my support.”  Still, we’re talking about a $3.99 rental and 84 minutes of your life, and Nancy, Please just is not THAT funny.  Nancy, Please is available on VOD from Amazon, Vudu and Google Play. 

Cinequest: Oh Boy

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Ranging from wry to hilarious, the German dark comedy Oh Boy hits every note perfectly.  It’s the debut feature for writer-director Jan Ole Gerster, a talented filmmaker we’ll be hearing from again.

We see a slacker moving from encounter to encounter in a series of vignettes.  Gerster has created a warm-hearted but lost character who needs to connect with others – but sabotages his every opportunity.  He has no apparent long term goals, and even his short term goal of getting some coffee is frustrated.

As the main character wanders through contemporary Berlin, Oh Boy demonstrates an outstanding sense of place, especially in a dawn montage near the end of the film.  The soundtrack is also excellent – the understated music complements each scene remarkably well.

Oh Boy plays again at Cinequest on March 9.