Hulu, indie films

Is This Thing On? Standup as Marriage Therapy

Is This Thing On? movie poster

Is This Thing On? is a 2025 American comedy-drama directed by Bradley Cooper, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Will Arnett (who also stars) and Mark Chappell. Loosely inspired by the life of comedian John Bishop, the film follows Alex (Arnett) and Tess Novak (Laura Dern), a long-married couple trying to navigate separation while co-parenting their two sons. As Alex unexpectedly drifts into stand-up comedy and Tess reconnects with her past as a volleyball athlete, the film explores divorce, reinvention, and the messy possibility of finding your way back to someone.

Although this movie deals with the (mostly amateur) standup comedy scene in New York City, it’s fairly lightweight as a comedy. You can’t really criticize Arnett’s character for not being hilarious, because it’s built into the story that he’s a newbie with no illusions of becoming a great comic. He uses comedy as self-expression and even therapy. To be fair, many professional standup comedians aren’t that different.

The movie goes back and forth between the two worlds of a struggling marriage and the comedy club subculture. While I don’t have firsthand knowledge of the comedy world, the way Alex is gradually accepted by his fellow comics and the way the audience halfheartedly laughs at his barely-planned jokes has an authentic ring. Similarly, the scenes between Arnett and Dern, as they go through cycles of anger, attraction, repulsion, and forgiveness, capture some of the messiness of real relationships.

As Alex goes back and forth between his apartment, visiting his kids, and working his comedy act, we never see what he does during the day. One of my pet peeves in movies and TV shows is characters who are seemingly immune to the everyday (primarily financial) concerns of most people. Alex and Tess own a home, somewhere on New York’s Metro North line (Westchester?), are raising kids, and we never see how they pay the bills.

Tess is recruited as a volleyball coach, but what was she doing before this? The only mention of Alex’s career is that he’s in “finance,” a single word that explains his ability to maintain a Manhattan apartment after moving out. For someone with a presumably demanding job, he has lots of free time and is able to keep nightclub (comedy club) hours. It was obviously a decision to not show anyone’s 9-5 rut, but this takes away from the realism.

There are strong supporting roles as well –Primarily Bradley Cooper himself as “Balls,” the mandatory goofy friend and Andra Day as his wife Christine.

Is This Thing On?, despite having a great cast (I don’t think I’ve ever disliked anything with Laura Dern) and an interesting storyline, is not the most entertaining or engaging film. I feel a little guilty saying this, as I agree with Time critic Stephanie Zacharek who says that this is the kind of movie Hollywood has forgotten how to make -one whose target audience is actually intelligent adults.

Is This Thing On? is not extremely long at just around two hours, but it probably would have flowed more smoothly if they’d cut 15 minutes or so. Nevertheless, it’s worth seeing if you like character-driven movies that maintain some degree of realism, something not very common these days.

Is This Thing On? is currently streaming on Hulu, Amazon Prime (costs extra), and other platforms.

 

Documentary, indie films

Secret Mall Apartment

Secret Mall Apartment movie poster.
Poster for Secret Mall Apartment depicting people sitting on a couch.

 

Secret Mall Apartment is a fascinating documentary currently streaming on Netflix and other places (it’s getting really hard to keep track as movies and shows constantly jump from one service to another).

The documentary follows Michael Townsend, an adjunct professor and drawing instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and a group of artists who, in 2003, secretly built an apartment hidden inside Providence Place Mall in Providence, Rhode Island.

I watched this without knowing the background at all. At first, I thought it might be about a group of squatters who move into an abandoned mall. But, no, they move in while the mall is open, making it more or a challenge and more entertaining to watch.

Townsend was clearly the ringleader. He and seven others, many former students from RISD’s summer program, started it as a short experiment but ended up remaining there for 4 years!

Why Did They Do It?

The group approached this as an project and cultural experiment rather than out of necessity. While they are presented as artists who live on the margins and were struggling financially, they weren’t homeless.

Their motives seem to be complex. It was at least partly a kind of protest against gentrification, consumer culture, and the mall’s impact on Eagle Square, a neighborhood where Townsend used to live. We see scenes where Townsend helped set up a kind of artist’s colony there before they were kicked out by developers, so the mall project wasn’t his first rodeo when it came to unconventional art. The scenes from Eagle Square had a Burning Man kind of atmosphere, with all kinds of artwork and installations all over the place.

While not originally intended as a documentary, they did film a great deal of the mall experiment with small digital cameras. They didn’t live there full time, but did inhabit the space for weeks on end. They were finally discovered in 2007. Townsend was arrested but his only punishment was probation and a lifelong ban from the mall.

Much of the suspense and even humor of Secret Mall Apartment comes from watching them sneak in and out of the space, often carrying furniture and, at one point, concrete blocks to build a wall.

While this has the feel of a low budget documentary, it also has some big players backing it, especially actor/director Jesse Eisenberg who is the executive producer.

Aside from the mall project, the movie also delves into some of Townsend’s other activities, such as a mural project honoring emergency workers who perished on 9/11.

Documentary or Mockumentary?

Today, it’s easy to become suspicious of documentaries and wonder if they are actually mockumentaries. One thing that might make one wonder in this case is the extensive footage that, according to ringleader Townsend, was never meant to be publicly released.

One element that might cause some confusion and a blurring of the doc/mock distinction is that a replica of the original mall apartment was built for the film.

The fact that more than 20 years elapsed between the original occupation of the mall and the doc is probably the best evidence of its basic authenticity. If the footage had been shot a year before, it would be easier to suspect that the movie had been the goal all along.

Director Workman says, “The story is kind of a Trojan horse, where you go in expecting one thing and it’s constantly subverting your preconceptions as you watch it,” Workman says. “You hear the premise, and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is gonna be like one of those crazy prank movies.’ But it’s using that to explore these deeper ideas about art and what it means, as well as gentrification and how we’re living in the shadows of these corporations.”

I was half expecting it to be a “Trojan horse” maybe along the lines of Exit Through the Gift Shop, which seems to be a project by street artist Thiery Guetta but then morphs into a vehicle by the more notorious Banksy.

By comparison, Secret Mall Apartment is relatively straightforward, whether or not we totally believe that all this footage was never meant for public consumption.

Secret Mall Apartment is a fascinating look at something that was a combination art project, protest, and whimsical experiment.

 

 

absurdist, indie films

Marty Supreme: Misadventures of a Table Tennis Hustler

 

Marty Supreme movie poster.
Movie poster for Marty Supreme showing actor Timothée Chalamet.

Marty Supreme is a fictionalized account of the table tennis player (and hustler), Marty Reisman. I had a greater than average interest in seeing this movie as I played competitive table tennis back in the day (albeit at a very modest level) and actually played at Reisman’s club in New York City now an then. However, the movie is only very loosely based on the actual Reisman.

In fact, it’s less of a sports film than a fast-paced, chaotic journey following the antics of an unhinged and amoral character. Apparently, director Josh Safdie has an interest in table tennis, which drew him to Reisman’s character.

Marty Mauser (brilliantly portrayed by Timothée Chalamet, who also had a notable role as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown a few years ago) is a table tennis and all-around hustler in 1950s New York. He works in his uncle’s shoe store but is anxious to leave that job so he can travel and play in tournaments. He takes money at gunpoint from a fellow employee (which he may or may not have been legitimately owed; Mauser walks a moral gray area throughout the film) so he can fly to England to compete.

Marty reaches the finals of the tournament only to be defeated by a Japanese opponent who is using a new type of paddle. This part of the film is based on reality; Reisman did lose to an unheralded Japanese player who was using a revolutionary type of rubber that would change the game forever (though in the movie, he uses plain wood, which is also very tricky to play against).

In between games, Marty manages to hustle (separately) the unlikely couple played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin O’Leary. Paltrow plays an aging movie star who is charmed by the slick Marty. O’Leary, best known as a Shark Tank judge  essentially plays himself, a ruthless CEO who only cares about profits.

The title Marty Supreme comes from a line of table tennis balls Marty invents, which are yellow-gold in color rather than white for better visibility. Other than these fairly short explorations into the niche sport of table tennis (Marty makes a decidedly non-prophetic prediction in the movie that table tennis will one day be a massively popular spectator sport in the U.S.), the film mainly follows Marty’s absurdist  misadventures as he gets a married girlfriend pregnant, unwisely attempts to out-maneuver the O’Leary character, gets chased down by a gang of angry locals after he and a friend hustle them at a club, and gets shot at by
a property owner who finds a dog Marty was watching for someone. In another random sequence,  he manages to get into a bathtub that crashes through the floor.

Marty Fabulous has been compared to Uncut Gems, where Adam Sandler plays a similarly out-of-control character who gets into scarcely believable scenarios. The constant chaos also reminded me a bit of Pineapple Express. In all these films, the specifics of the plot are secondary to the frenetic energy of the characters and the bizarre situations they fall into.

Marty Fabulous is a darkly funny rollercoaster of a movie with a great cast that manages to make the most absurd scenarios almost believable. Chalamet manage to make Marty, if not quite sympathetic, at least someone it’s hard to root against. He moves so frantically from one disaster to the next, we scarcely have time to process how manipulative and self-destructive he often is. And he finally displays some genuine emotion at the very end.

I was a little disappointed that the history of table tennis and the life of the real Marty Reisman were not more prominent, but that won’t matter to 99.9% of viewers.

The Real Marty

The Money Player book cover
The Money Player book cover with Marty Reisman hitting a ping pong ball.
Page autographed by Marty Reisman
Table tennis player Marty Reisman autograph in book The Money Player.

 

For anyone curio

If you are curious about Marty Reisman (1930-2012), he wrote an autobiography called The Money Player. I still have an autographed copy, but it may be out of print. Maybe this movie will inspire a re-printing.

 

Amazon Prime, Indie film directors, indie films, Romcoms

In Search of a Midnight Kiss: A Chaotic Craigslist Date in LA

In Search of a Midnight Kiss poster

 

In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007) is one of those under-appreciated indie films from the 2000s that’s now getting a revival via streaming. It’s appealing for several reasons, at least if you appreciate low-key films that emphasize characters and dialogue over action.

Alex Holdridge directed this micro- to low-budget film set in Los Angeles. It’s all about an extended date between 20-somethings Wilson (Scoot McNairy) and Vivian (Sara Simmonds), who meet on Craigslist to avoid spending New Year’s Eve alone.

There’s not too much plot to discuss, as most of the movie shows Wilson and Vivian wandering around LA. It turns out both are in an emotionally fragile space, and they alternately bond and quarrel. The meandering conversations as the pair aimlessly wander are reminiscent of Richard Linkater‘s Before Sunrise, but Holdridge inserts more volatility between the two (Linklater saved that for Before Midnight, the third in his trilogy).

Aside from the attraction-repulsion energy between the two, Vivian is contending with a possibly psychotic ex named Jack (Robert Murphy) who threatens (on the phone) to kill Wilson with a shotgun. At this point, I thought the film would take a turn similar to Something Wild (1986), where Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith have a wild, spontaneous date until they are pursued by the latter’s violent ex (Ray Liotta, in one of his best pre-Goodfellas roles), and the whole tone of the film turns darker. But In Search of a Midnight Kiss maintains its focus on Wilson and Vivian and Jack fades into the background.

We also get to spend some time with Wilson’s roommate Jacob (Brian McGuire) and Jacob’s girlfriend Min (Kathleen Luong), who may or may not get engaged.

If you’re an action addict or even someone looking for a feel-good rom-com, you should probably skip In Search of a Midnight Kiss. It’s an understated dramedy that underlines the fragility of modern relationships in a big city. There’s also nice footage of the city, including parts of downtown LA and East Hollywood that aren’t as commonly filmed as more touristy areas.

Apart from its other charms, the movie serves as a time capsule of a distinct moment in culture and technology right before the smartphone era. Video stores were still around, people used both flip phones and landlines, MySpace and Facebook co-existed, and websites were still novel and quirky. Vivian boasts about her own site dedicated to lost shoes. As a random piece of trivia, this website, The Lost Shoe Project, actually existed at one point.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and other platforms.

indie films, Quirky comedies, Shorts, Spanish language movies

Sidewalls: Romance Amidst Urban Alienation

 

Medianeras movie poster

Sidewalls had its start as a short film in 2006. The full-length version was released in 2011 and has only recently come to streaming services. The original title of this Argentinian movie is Medianeras. Directed by Gustavo Taretto, it’s a semi-comic exploration of urban alienation in the modern world.

Although Sidewalls got some attention at film festivals in Latin America, it’s one of those under the radar independent films that’s easy to overlook but that’s hopefully enjoying a new streaming audience.

The movie starts like a documentary, with a voiceover by Martin (Javier Droias) describing the architecture of Buenos Aires. He notes that the haphazard way dissimilar buildings are placed right next to each other reflects poor planning, which in turn reflects the poor planning of our lives. Much of this could apply to any modern city.

Martin is a web designer who is borderline agoraphobic, staying mostly in his small apartment. We then meet Mariana (Pilar López de Ayala), a young woman who lives in the same neighborhood. She is an architect who currently works designing storefronts. She keeps mannequins at home, which she sometimes interacts with.

The movie alternates between these two lonely characters as they wander around the city, have bad dates, and wonder why modern life seems so empty. Of course, the big question is whether these two will ever meet. There have been a few rom-coms using a similar device, Sleepless in Seattle probably the most famous. But Sidewalls is more than just a rom-com; it’s a look at urban anomie and how it makes meaningful relationships so hard to find.

The technology in Sidewalls is a bit dated, which reflects its 2006 origin. The characters all use flip phones, though they’re already addicted to texting.

The message, though,  is as relevant as ever if not more so.  People are obviously more dependent on their devices than ever. Martin is a bit ahead of his time, working at home and having all his meals delivered, practices not as common in the 2010 era.

The architecture theme is interesting as well,  as building and streets certainly have an impact on how we feel and interact.

Sidewalls is the kind of quirky, unpredictable indie film I tend to enjoy. The characters don’t always behave rationally, but the whole point here is that modern life alienates people and breeds loneliness and neurosis. If there’s any message here, it’s simply that being immersed in electronic devices isn’t likely the path to human connection or happiness.

Sidewalls is currently streaming on AMC+ and other sites. As of this writing, it’s not on any free streaming platforms.

 

 

 

 

 

Documentary, Netflix

Chaos: The Manson Murders Documentary

Chaos: Manons Murders movie image

This documentary is based on the book by Tom O’Neil, Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties. With such a provocative title, we’re led to expect mind-blowing revelations. Unfortunately, it’s mostly speculation, though it’s still fascinating.

O’Neil reveals an anti-climactic spoiler right at the beginning:

“I still don’t know what happened but I know that what we were told isn’t what happened.”

This is an honest, if deflating, admission that could probably be applied to many popular conspiracy theories of the last half century or so. We can just sense that something is off with the official narrative, but it’s less easy to pinpoint what really occurred. As a case in point, Chaos director Errol Morris says in an interview with Slate:

“I believe there was a conspiracy to kill JFK, although if you ask me, I would be hard-pressed to tell you exactly the nature of that conspiracy.”

The Official Narrative

The most thorough and widely believed version of the case are found in Bugliosi’s 1974 book Helter Skelter, named after the Beatle’s song that allegedly inspired Manson.

O’Neil’s book presents some compelling reasons to doubt Bugliosi’s account. It’s not the horrific events themselves that are disputed but Manson’s motives. While the Helter Skelter theory looks mainly at Manson’s apocalyptic vision of starting a race war, O’Neil examines some interesting connections between Manson and the CIA MK-ULTRA program, which involved mind control and LSD.

There’s also a possible connection between a CIA-linked scientist named Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West and Manson. Both West and Manson have links to the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic. Manson often brought his followers to the clinic for medical treatments (largely treating venereal diseases). West apparently went to the same clinic to recruit subjects for his dubious experiments.

Unfortunately, this critical link between West and Manson is speculation, as there’s no evidence that they ever met.

O’Neil suggests that Manson may not have been taking direct orders from West or the CIA. Rather, he may have simply been given the freedom to “do whatever he wanted.” In this view, Manson himself may have been part of a wider experiment -let all these crazy hippies take lots of drugs and see what happens. This could explain why law enforcement was so slow at apprehending Manson and his followers.

Linking Manson with the CIA overlaps with many other popular conspiracy theories regarding the 1960s counterculture. Many of these theories are related to the Laurel Canyon music scene as well as the Beatles. If you want a taste, just look up O’Neil’s book on Amazon and check out the related books. It’s an endless rabbit hole.

Manson’s connection to the music industry is well established, of course. It was possibly a key factor in the murders. Manson supposedly thought the house where Sharon Tate and others were killed was occupied by music producer Terry Melcher, who declined to produce Manson’s record.

The Manson murders are an American true crime saga that never seems to stop fascinating people. Quentin Tarantino revived it with Once Upon a Time in America, which postulates an alternative outcome.

The Chaos documentary only skims the surface and you really need to read O’Neil’s book for more details. Director Morris takes a skeptical view but doesn’t present O’Neil as a total crank. It would be hard to do this as O’Neil himself admits he doesn’t know the real truth. The very fact that he made this film at all suggests he considers the case far from closed. Unfortunately, there’s not much hope that we’ll get any closure. Many of the key players surrounding the Manson murders, including Manson himself and prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi are now dead, making it unlikely we’ll ever know the complete truth.

Amazon Prime, dark comedy, Film Festivals

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person Review

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Humanist Vampire movie poster

In the last couple of months, my search for entertaining low budget films on streaming sites hasn’t been very rewarding. I couldn’t even make it through a few of them (I won’t even bother to mention the names). Fortunately, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person was a pleasant surprise.

This 2023 French language Canadian film, directed by Ariane Louis-Seize, is set in Montreal. While it hasn’t been widely seen in theaters, it has an impressive share of film festival wins and nominations in multiple countries. Like many contemporary independent films, it will most likely reach its widest audience via streaming.

The title lets you know right away that it’s firmly in the horror-comedy genre, though not exactly how I expected. While there’s ample dark humor here, it’s not a laugh-out-loud kind of funny. Nor is there that much horror, at least for a vampire movie. It’s actually more of a dramedy, exploring a platonic relationship between two misfits, one human, the other a vampire.

Sasha (Sara Montpetit) is a young vampire with a problem; she doesn’t like to kill. Her fangs aren’t even properly developed, to the chagrin of her respectable vampire family. Paul (Félix-Antoine Bénard) is a suicidal teen who’s bullied both at school and work. Sasha and Paul meet at a group for depressed and suicidal people. The idea is that Paul wants to die and Sasha is seeking willing victims.

The plot is in some ways reminiscent of Let the Right One In (both the Swedish and American versions), but Humanist Vampire has a style of its own. It delves more into areas such as mental health and family dynamics.

One of the main reasons this film works so well is that it doesn’t go overboard trying to be funny. The characters play it straight and avoid the pitfall of becoming parodies, as lesser actors might have done in this kind of movie. Sasha is appropriately morose as a vampire with a conscience, just as her sister Denise (Noémie O’Farrell) is a more typically feral and ruthless example of the species. Paul comes across as a genuinely troubled misfit teen. Despite the absurdity of the premise, we empathize with these characters.

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and AMC.

 

 

 

Amazon Prime, independent film directors, indie films

Kwik Stop: Low Key, Overlooked Indie Film Now on Amazon Prime

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Kwik Stop movie poster

Kwik Stop was released in 2001 but, despite winning several film festival awards, didn’t get much attention or distribution. It’s recently been added to Amazon Prime, so hopefully it will get a wider audience, which it truly deserves. A Slate article  by Charles Taylor argues that the lack of fanfare around Kwik Stop reveals everything that’s wrong with the movie industry. This article is from almost 10 years ago; if anything, things are worse today.

Michael Gilio wrote, directed, and is one of the stars of Kwik Stop, a hard to label micro-budget film that doesn’t often do what we expect. Set in a dismal, generic American landscape that appears to be somewhere in the Midwest.

It starts as a young guy who calls himself Lucky (Gilio) drives up to a convenience store in a classic car. Between his car and haircut, he looks like a James Dean character. After doing some petty shoplifting, he’s confronted by Didik (Lara Phillips), a teen who’s anxious to leave town. She threatens to tell a nearby cop about Lucky’s crimes if he doesn’t give her a ride. He plans to drive to Hollywood to become an actor. Didi wants to tag along.

With this start, Kwik Stop looks at first to be a road movie, possibly the violent kind along the lines of Bonnie and Clyde or Badlands. However, neither of these characters is quite capable of acting out such extreme actions. They are limited by a kind of circumstantial and existentialist quicksand that prevents them from getting too far.

What follows are some mild spoilers, though Kwik Stop is not a plot-driven movie, so there’s not really much to spoil.

Lucky and Didi have a series of fairly absurd misadventures involving burglaries that result in Didi getting sent to a juvenile detention center. Lucky then concocts an absurd scheme to break her out, recruiting his ex-girlfriend to assist. This sequence of events is part of what’s refreshing about the movie. Your first instinct may to think, “this is too ridiculous; no one would do anything like that.  But when you think about it, it’s so ridiculous that it seems like it could be true. It’s actually too ridiculous to fit into a formula novel or screenplay.

Along with Lucky and Didi, a depressed alcoholic named Emil (Rich Komenich) gets sucked into Didi’s chaotic life. He’s a sad sack character who proves to be more complicated than he first appears.

To appreciate Kwik Stop, you need to take a step back from the characters and understand that no one really knows what they’re doing. They are oddly believable as people who are making everything up from one moment to the next.

As the aforementioned Slate article  points out, some of Kwik Stop‘s absurdity is reminiscent of early Jim Jarmusch films such as Stranger than Paradise and Down By Law. Later mumblecore movies of the early 2000s also have some similarities. However, Gilio has a distinct style of his own. Jarmusch’s characters, often seem like they are in a perpetual existentialist fog. By contrast, Lucky and Didi actually seem to believe they are headed somewhere; it’s just that their plans and actions are so confused and self-defeating that they have no chance of achieving their goals.

Kwik Stop is the kind of low key, unpredictable indie movie that’s all too rare these days. It’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime, FreeVee, Apple TV, and other services.

 

 

 

 

 

dark comedy, Netflix, Standup comedy

Adrienne Iapalucci on Netflix: What Does Dark Comedy Tell Us About Society?

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Adrienne Iapalucci
Adrienne Iapalucci The Dark Queen

In her Netflix special The Dark Queen, Adrienne Iapalucci lives up to her moniker. She begins by saying, “I’m not a good person,” and nothing that follows gives us any reason to doubt this. I have no idea if her misanthropic persona is her true self. But if not, she does a great job of making us believe.

Standup comedy is one of the hardest forms of entertainment to pull off. More so now, for a couple of reasons. First, it’s gotten so mainstream that the competition is fierce, and being original is nearly impossible. Even the best of them start to sound like they’re regurgitating the same stuff after you’ve seen them a few times. The other reason is that it’s hard to know what you can joke about nowadays. The amount of backlash comics like Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais get for their un-PC jokes probably discourages others from stepping out of line. That is not remotely the case with Adrienne Iapalucci.

Nothing is off limits it seems, as she jokes about 9/11, Muslims, disliking Puerto Ricans, and victims of school shootings, for starters. Nor does she do it playfully, like Russell Peters who specializes in roasting every ethnic group. She unleashes one inappropriate line after another without any backpedaling.

Unlike left-leaning bluish comics like Sarah Silverman or right-leaning ones like Gervais, Iapalucci seems like an equal opportunity misanthrope. I can appreciate this about her, as she doesn’t push any particular agenda, apart from pure nihilism.

I find her more entertaining than your usual standup routine, but then I’ve never been the genre’s biggest fan. At least you never know what kind of unhinged, inappropriate thing she’ll say next. Her deadpan delivery adds to the effect.

Maybe cancel culture is already moving into the rearview mirror. People are finally realizing the futility of trying to quell opinions (and jokes) that offend them. After all, the controversy attached to Chapelle and Gervais has profited more than harmed them. They’ve turned their most objectionable jokes, regarding trans people, into branding tools. I’m not sure if that makes them funnier -I’d put them both into the large category of comics whose material has gotten overly predictable. But attempts to “cancel” them have surely failed.

I searched for reviews of the Dark Queen show and didn’t see much in the way of outrage or demands to silence her. I’m talking about “professional” reviews now as I didn’t scour the web for every Rotten Tomatoes review. It seems to be sinking in that calling attention to a message you don’t like is only fueling it.

What Does the Dark Queen Say About Us?

I’m a little torn when contemplating the societal implications of someone like Iapalucci, along with Anthony Jeselnik and others whose style of comedy is pure darkness. On the one hand, I wonder if such blatant misanthropy isn’t part of an overall desensitizing, contributing to a world where empathy is an anachronism and utter self-centeredness is the norm.

On the other hand, her utter disregard for limits serves to undermine the overly sensitive tendencies of cancel culture. As Kat Timpf points out in You Can’t Joke About That, society has become unsettlingly humorless in recent years.

In a better, saner world, comics like Adrienne Iapalucci wouldn’t exist, at least in their current form. The conditions and atrocities they chuckle at shouldn’t be part of reality. But given that they are, we have a choice. We can approach them with grim seriousness, allowing only pundits, experts, and leaders to address them. Or we can let the dark comics do their thing, for better and for worse.

Broadly speaking, Adrienne Iapalucci is part of a lineage that includes Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, and George Carlin (to name a few). They often cross the boundary into the offensive and tasteless. But they also hold a mirror to society, revealing uncomfortable truths that are present whether we look at them or not.

 

 

Indie film directors, movie reviews, Netflix

The Killer on Netflix: A Hitman’s Vendetta

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The Killer on Netflix movie poster

It seems like Netflix is specializing in made for streaming movies with extremely limited theater runs about contract killers. At least if we consider two recent offerings: Richard Linklater’s Hitman and David Fincher’s The Killer (2023).

Actually, the two films aren’t very similar. I’ve already discussed Hitman, where the protagonist isn’t even a real contract killer but an undercover quasi-cop pretending to be one. The killer in The Killer is a bona fide killer. In fact, as played by Michael Fassbender, he’s one of cinema’s most ruthless hitmen, at least for a protagonist (when it comes to villains, it would be hard to list the endless variety of psychopaths portrayed over the years).

The killer, whose real name we never learn, uses a long list of pseudonyms, one of the movie’s few borderline amusing aspects. Although we see him in action, we mostly hear his inner dialogue, accompanied by a Smiths soundtrack.

It could be tedious to hear someone repeating various Nietzschean and Machiavellian quotes (along with one by Aleister Crowley), but here it’s actually compelling. Many of the words are repetitive, but we’re interested to see how (and if) the killer acts them out in each scenario.

As the killer meticulously prepares to do a job in Paris, he makes a mistake and shoots a bystander instead of the target. This sets off a messy sequence of events that throws off his equilibrium. As you might imagine, people who hire contract killers aren’t likely to forgive mistakes. They attack his home in the Dominican Republic and maim his girlfriend. The assassins, however, make their own mistake and leave her alive and able to identify them.

The killer, it turns out, isn’t too cold and calculating to resist the lure of revenge. So most of the film follows him as he tracks down each and every culpable party. He continues to repeat his mantra: “Stick to your plan. Anticipate, don’t improvise. Trust no one. Never yield an advantage. Fight only the battle you’re paid to fight.”

As his actions clearly don’t fit this stoic ideal, he almost seems like a malfunctioning android or Terminator, functioning at a high and deadly level, but not quite the way he was programmed to work. Tilda Swinton has a nice role as a charismatic fellow assassin who is on the killer’s list. They play a life-and-death game of cat and mouse over drinks at a restaurant.

We get no backstory for the killer. Did he watch his family get murdered as a child? Was he mentored by a fellow sociopath? We have no idea as we only see him as a finished product.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the 1967 French classic Le Samouraï, but that film similarly portrays a lone wolf, hard-to-kill hitman on the run.

The Killer brings an intense energy to a familiar genre. It alternates between action and slower-paced brooding scenes. While not exactly groundbreaking -a hitman seeking revenge is a familiar trope-, for fans of arty-Euro style suspense, it’s worth a watch.

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