King Kelly

2012 at the Movies: most overlooked films

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Seth Rogen and Michele Williams in TAKE THIS WALTZ

What are 2012’s most overlooked films?  Take This Waltz, Elena and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia are on some Top Ten lists, including mine, but they still haven’t gotten the buzz that they deserve. These are three of the very best films of the year.  I wish that more women, especially, would experience writer-director Sarah Polley’s work and Michele Williams’ performance in Take This Waltz.  Anatolia is admittedly not for everyone, but I think that future film historians may rate it as a masterpiece.

The thriller Deadfall was solid, but got lost among the big Holiday movies.  And the brilliantly original satire King Kelly, which I saw on VOD,  wasn’t released in any theaters that I know of.

King Kelly: a rip-roaring satire

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In the refreshing satire King Kelly, a girl strips for her webcam and aspires to become a sex website mogul.  Her monomaniacal brattiness leads to a series of bad decisions that drive her to leave her parents’ suburban Long Island  home for a madcap series of adventures, which are all recorded on a cell phone.

That the entire movie is shot on a cell phone is more than a novelty here – it enhances the urgency and chaos of the rip-roaring escapades as well as satirizing our current post-it-on-Facebook-while-it’s-happening culture.

The nuclear core of King Kelly is the main character of Kelly, brought alive in a full throttle performance by Louisa Krause.  Besides taking teen self absorption and selfishness to an unsurpassed level, Kelly combines it with astonishingly misplaced moral superiority and entitlement.  [And how do kids get to be so entitled these days?  Are there concierge suites in kindergarten where a child doesn’t need to wait her turn?]   King Kelly‘s genius is that the Kelly’s brattiness is not just unappealing, but so over-the-top as to be very, very funny.

King Kelly also satirizes our reality TV world where people are no longer capable of being embarrassed by any behavior on their part.

It’s original, funny and moves fast.   I saw King Kelly on YouTube VOD.