Starring: Mark Duplass, Katie Aselton, Rhett Wilkins

Directed by: Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass

I don’t watch romantic comedies.  I simply don’t like them.  I usually find them formulaic and schmaltzy, and very, very, very predictable.  Being an underrepresented genre in my movie viewing, I decided it might be time to take in one or two.  So it was I came to decide on “The Puffy Chair.”

This was mainly because it was written and directed by brothers Mark and Jay Duplass.  Jay is more of a behind the scenes fellow, but I had become familiar with Mark as star of the overlooked FX comedy “The League,” and figured if I was going to give a “rom-com” a try, might as well go with someone’s work I enjoy, at least.

Duplass plays Josh, a wannabe musician who has been relegated to a minor booking agent.  The movie opens with Josh having dinner with his girlfriend, Emily (Katie Aselton).  He is preparing to go on a trip from New York to Georgia for his father’s birthday.  Along the way he means to stop and pick up a vintage chair he purchased off EBAY (oh, my bad, EBUY) just like the one his father owned when he was a child.  He is also to stop and visit with his brother Rhett (Rhett Wilkins).  During the dinner Emily and Josh have an argument, and to make up for it Josh invites her to come with him on his road trip.

The first stop is to meet Rhett, who has some sort of unorthodox, beatnik, spiritual mojo going on.  He talks a lot about the energy in the room, or between people.  Also he really likes lizards, apparently.  When Josh mentions he’s going to Georgia to see Dad on his birthday, Rhett admits he had forgotten the date, and asks if he can tag along, much to the chagrin of Josh and Emily.  Then hilarity and hijinks ensue!  This is a regular “You, Me and Dupree!”  ROAD TRIP!!

Actually, this is probably the antithesis of that sort of film.  Although I have to admit, I haven’t seen “You, Me and Dupree.”  I will go so far as to say you would have a greater chance of seeing me drink hot lava straight from an erupting volcano than watching it.  Rhett isn’t really introduced to be the over-the-top comedy relief; he’s just another character in the story, one for the other two to play off of in different ways so you can learn more about their personalities.

As a matter of fact, this movie isn’t really a comedy at all.  If you are going in thinking it is, you will be sorely disappointed.  This is a dramatic look at the relationship between Jay and Emily. You are invited to their petty arguments, their oddball conversation, even their awkward, unbalanced baby talk moments.   It looks in to why they are together, if they should stay together and examines how we make those decisions in relationships.

The film flounders, however, when it isn’t focused on the main duo.  A few scenes are dull and repetitive, feeling as though they are there just to fill run time.  And Duplass’s sparse direction is not going to keep your attention during these downturns.

Fortunately there are a handful of scenes with dialogue so unbelievably well written, reflecting perfectly conversations most all of us have engaged in, that you can forgive the shortcomings of the other parts of the film.  Not the kind of overwritten, overly-dramatic drudgery written in something like, say, “The Notebook,”  dialogue nobody would ever really, truly utter written specifically to illicit a certain response, most often crying.  Rather believably real, gritty, relationship dialogue.  I swear I have had some of these conversations before.

Not only is the dialogue eerily familiar to anybody who has been in a troubled relationship, but Duplass and Aselton deliver said dialogue in flawless fashion.  They have a great chemistry, probably attributable to their real life marriage.

“The Puffy Chair” is nowhere close to a perfect film, but when it is hitting on all cylinders it is achingly familiar and introspective without having to rely on preposterous stereotypes to get the point across.  It’s certainly not for everybody, some would probably describe it as boring at worst and droll at best, but  it sets out to make some interesting observations about relationships without cramming the ideas down our throats, and in this it is very successful .

Written by Ryan Venson

Starring: Evan Glodell, Jessie Wiseman, Tyler Dawson

Directed by: Evan Glodell

Every synopsis I have read of Bellflower misrepresents the film.  I know I started a recent review with a similar device, the review of “Survival Wilderness for Girls,” but it is true for both films.  Maybe this is just becoming more prevalent in an era where a short online synopsis might convince you to order a movie through a number of readily available online streaming options (Cinema Now, Vudu, Netflix, PPV, Amazon, etc.), but I can’t remember a time when more films where misrepresented through synopsis and trailers than in the last few years.

IMDB’s synopsis reads like this:

Two friends spend all their free time building flame-throwers and weapons of mass destruction in hopes that a global apocalypse will occur and clear the runway for their imaginary gang “Mother Medusa”.

While this is true, it is a pretty small portion of the film.  Heck, when I sat down to watch the film I thought it was going to take place in a future poised on the brink of annihilation.  However, Bellflower actually takes place in modern day California.  And is actually a love story.  Or a bromance.  Or a mixture of both.  And, yeah, there is a flamethrower thrown in for good measure.

Woodrow (Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) are two friends who are building a flamethrower together.  This isn’t to illustrate how weird they are, or mentally unstable.  It’s just something to pass the time.

At a bar one night Woodrow is taken with Milly (Jessie Wiseman), who hands him a beat-down in a particularly voracious cricket-eating competition.  They make plans for a date, deciding spontaneously to drive to small hole-in-the-wall diner in Texas, where Woodrow is punched in the nose, and also trades his car (whose dashboard is rigged to tap whisky from somewhere in the motor block) for a motorcycle.

These scenes take up about the first 40-45 minutes of the film, and they are dull.  None of the actors cast in the film are adept at acting, although some might garner themselves a “passable” critique.  Particularly problematic is Glodell, the writer and director of the film, who is also cast as the lead.  Many lines are delivered in a stiff manner, and his awkward , self-aware giggle will have you pulling out your hair by minute 20.

There was a point during this time period I considered turning the film off.  The one saving grace was its approach stylistically.  I was aware the supposed budget of the film was $17,000 which, when translated to film budget, is almost literally nothing.  I have seen films with four times the budget with four times less style (like this piece of festering feces: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469683/, which, even at 75 minutes long, was probably the greatest waste of time in my life).

So I continued to watch.  And at about minute 50, give or take, an event occurs which causes a fist fight, possible brain damage, arson and self-deprecation.

And the rest of the film is captivating.  It is finished in abruptly edited scenes and fevered, intoxicating visuals.  I’m not sure it excuses Glodell’s first half exercise in acting futility, but as the film is finished in an explosion of carnage and outrage, it is obvious he chose the overt “aw-gee-shucks” nature of the first half of the film to juxtapose the anger in the second half.

There is an ending monologue from Aiden which finishes the film perfectly.  It ties together everything in the film, from the violence perpetrated throughout, to relationships gone wrong, to the ramifications of poor decisions, and to the emotions associated therein, all with a “Road Warrior”-like apocalypse metaphor.  I really feel with a little tightening-up, this could have been a great film.  As-is, it’s set to be a piece of faulted cult cinema by a promising talent in the field.

Written by Ryan Venson

Starring: Jeanette Brox, Megan Henning, Ali Humiston, James Morrison

Directed by: Eli B. Despres, Kim Roberts

A lot of times, when I’m looking for a movie to view, I will go to Rottentomatoes.com and use their DVD finder.  You can pick a genre, percentage of freshness, decade, number of reviews, MPAA rating, etc.  It’s a pretty thorough system, really (though not without flaws).  And then I will wade laboriously through the choices, clicking, researching, and eventually adding way too many in my Netflix queue.

During the month of October, when I am looking for horror films, I usually set the bar fairly low.  Horror is a widely disregarded genre after all, and often times fairly so.

It was during one of these searches I found “Wilderness Survival for Girls.”  Sitting at 50% with only six reviews, there was no real meat to speak of.  The starring actresses were all nobodies, even seven full years after the film’s release (2004).  The directors had gone on to direct only documentaries, and the synopses all read like standard, “traumatized girls out for revenge” plots.  Here are the Rottentomatoes and Netflix rundowns:

RT — The thriller “Wilderness Survival for Girls” concerns a trio of high school girls who end up keeping a stranger captive in the woods

Netflix – -Three high school girls come to terms with their fears and discover their capacity for cruelty when a menacing stranger stumbles in to their cabin during an overnight camping trip deep in the woods.

I instantly thought of something like “I Spit on Your Grave,” which is not really my cup of tea.  But after reading reviews describing it as “brainier” and an interesting “psychological thriller,” I added it to the queue.

At the beginning of the film I thought it might instantly be undone by cheap filming, bad acting, amateurish direction and stereotyped characters.  However, as the film progresses and the leads are given more dialogue, the leads really settle into their respective parts.  Some of their personality traits are still exaggerated, but not to a point where they seem satirical.

The film itself is super low-budget.  The ending in particular, which takes place in the dead of night and in the middle of nowhere is, unfortunately, so painfully underproduced you can hardly tell what’s going on.  It’s safe to say the directors aren’t young Finchers or Boyles.  Here the idea is more important than the style.

Wilderness Survival for Girls is about three friends, Ruth, Deborah and Kate, in a remote cabin. A male stranger, Ed, does stumble in to their cabin one night.  And, in accordance with a crime that happened in the woods some years earlier, the girls believe Ed might be the perpetrator.  They take him captive, although he claims to simply be a homeless man who has been crashing at the unused cabin for years.

But that’s not really what the movie is about.

The movie is about the relationship between the three girls.  It’s about their uncertainty as they graduate from high school and move on to, or, in the case of Kate, not move on to college.  In particular it’s also about the realization of their sexuality and their uncertainty about men.  These latter two ideas are often reflected and explored through interactions with Ed, their hostage.

There are some tense moments in the film, so the movie does parade as a thriller.  Still, the movie, as I viewed it, was almost pure allegory, with Ed being a plot device.  An important part of the film, but if you wanted, you could write him off as not even real, simply a personification of each girl’s acute discomfort towards the opposite sex.

I believe the filmmakers wanted to make a coming of age story, but wanted to tone down the melodrama.  Holding a bum hostage in the wilderness is certainly a different backdrop for the emotions explored here.

Some people might think making an argument Ed isn’t even real is silly.  I would counter that every character in a fictional piece is a construct of somebody else’s imagination, so isn’t arguing about how “real” they are kind of silly as well?  He’s in the film, so he’s “real,” but he’s more device than character.  It’s a disconnect I’ve had in a lot of films lately, in particular Aronofsky’s work.  Maybe I’m reading too much in to it here.  Then again, after sitting through the entire piece, I find it just as hard to believe the filmmakers thought they were simply making a taught thriller.  It’s worth investigating for yourself, I think.  Maybe you’ll enjoy a well written film working on multiple levels.  Maybe you will be given a reason to derisively mock my exaggerated subtext.  And maybe, just maybe, neither.

Directed by: Barbara Brancaccio, Joshua Zeman

Cropsey is a documentary about that one stereotypical scary story everybody tells around the campfire, the one about the guy with a hook for a hand who hangs out in the woods…or lives on your street…or in the abandoned warehouse just down the block.  The ones that are obviously just stories.  But are they based on some semblance of fact?

In the early to mid-80s, on Staten Island, there was a string of children disappearances, most of which involved the mentally handicapped.  The documentary focuses primarily on the disappearance of Jennifer Schweiger, a young girl with down syndrome who disappeared in July of 1987.  Shortly thereafter, Andre Rand was arrested in relation to the crime due to eyewitness accounts putting him with the young girl earlier in the day.

Although Rand is at the center of the documentary, the filmmakers also delve deeply in to the history of Willowbrook, a state school for the mentally handicapped found on Staten Island.  In 1972 it was the focal point of an expose reported by a young Geraldo Rivera, trying to shed light on the unsuitable conditions therein.  Andre Rand was an orderly at the school, and after it shut its doors in the early 80s it was believed Rand still lived on the grounds in makeshift hovels, along with many of the misplaced patients who had nowhere to go when the building closed.

I’m not completely sure what the filmmakers initially set out to do.  As the film begins it feels more like any news piece run on a program like 48 Hours or Dateline.  Were they really thinking they were going to uncover something new or interesting in a case over 20 years old?  When the documentary was being filmed, Rand was getting ready to stand trial for the disappearance of another girl who had gone missing years earlier on the island.  Were they just rehashing facts, making a film based on a subject sure to have renewed interest given the circumstances?

I don’t know if it was what they had planned all along or if, at some point, they decided just rehashing the facts wasn’t going to be interesting enough to warrant a feature-film documentary, but the piece eventually starts to subtly sway away from whether Rand committed the crimes or not to an in depth look at the preconceived notions everybody, even the authorities, bring with them in to a case of this magnitude.

Some of the interviewees, including detectives who worked on the case, say they were sure Rand was part of a satanic cult.  Some say he was the ringleader of a group of former patients still living on the grounds who kidnapped the children for the sake of abusing them.  Some say he was a necrophile.  Some say a gopher for something larger and more deviant.  During the trial, eye-witnesses who hadn’t spoken in over twenty years pop out of nowhere to now claim they had seen something pertaining to the case.  Despite no physical evidence, families of many of the victims insist Rand is the culprit, hoping for closure to a mentally destructive portion of their past.

What begins as a film feeling like it wants to shed light on to the tired old formula of whether the perpetrator did or did not commit the murders, turns in to a look at how urban legends are built, and how rumors and different points of view often times distort the image of people we know nothing about.

There are clips of Rivera’s expose of Willowbrook, and they are haunting.  The areas are dark and windowless, the children are moaning and rocking, most naked, some bent in unnatural contortions.  Rivera reports in most building there may be one attendant for upwards of 50 mentally handicapped children, and all areas smelled of disease and death.  I shudder to think about the number of patients who died on the premises and were simply swept under the rug.  In what I assume was the culminating soliloquy of his piece, Rivera sums it up perfectly, “What we found and documented here is a disgrace to all of us.  This place isn’t a school it’s a dark corner where we throw children who aren’t pretty to look at, it’s the big town’s leper colony.”

There’s a portion of the film where Rand decries that everybody at Willowbrook, including the staff, were victims.  After seeing the conditions in the hospital, I can’t believe anybody who worked there didn’t come away mentally scarred.  Could working in those conditions day in and day out have caused psychological damage so deep to Rand he felt it was his duty to “save” the children from parents who he didn’t believe wanted them?  It makes more sense than any of the other theories posited.  But, then, maybe it’s the filmmakers, adeptly making me feel a certain way with leading interviews and subtle inferences.  Who’s to say?

Written by Ryan Venson

Starring: Jaime Winstone, Riz Ahmed, Andy Nyman

Directed by: Yann Demange

“Dead Set” is a British mini-series revolving around the TV show “Big Brother.”  Oh, and zombies.

There is an unexplained outbreak of the walking (in this case running) undead.  It makes its way through a throng of onlookers for the eviction night special of “Big Brother.”  Before you can say “hunger for human flesh,” the zombies have made their way on to the back stages of the production, with mainly only the main set itself not being overrun.

Pretty much the plot, right there.  This is a five episode mini-series, running nearly two and a half hours in length, so there are some subplots, of course.  The producer of the show, Patrick, gets stuck in the green room with one of the cast, Pippa.  Our main heroine is Kelly, a production assistant on the show.  Her boyfriend Riq is stuck at a deserted train station.

So it is simple, as most zombie related films are.  “Dead Set” both excels and fails in this aspect.

The largest problem here is the similarities between “Dead Set” and a number of other zombie films are much too striking.  A group of stereotyped survivors (jock, hottie, jerk, bimbo, nerd, black girl, and plucky, average, everygirl…Kelly, of course) are stuck together to try and overcome awesome odds.

This could be, at least somewhat, considered commentary on just the sort of cast they always assemble for these sorts of reality television productions.  But it doesn’t really feel that way.  Which is something else I found to be a bit disappointing about “Dead Set.”  There doesn’t appear to be any real subtext.  For a zombie series set in one of the most mind-numbingly dull, despicable, and exploitative of all genres, “Dead Set” pretty much plays as a straight zombie flick, in particular almost exactly like the “Dawn of the Dead” remake.  It seems as though they have simply replaced the iconic Romero mall with a television set, and then just followed the fail-safe zombie recipe:  A healthy mix of havoc and a reliance on one’s morbid curiosity as to who will live the longest, and how they will eventually expire.

Not that I always want my zombie films to have undertones.  And, as I said, this is also where “Dead Set” excels.  There is plenty of action, plenty of surprisingly good gore, plenty of gruesome deaths.  While the series probably actually worked better as a mini-series, (when was the last time you wished your zombie film was nearly two and a half hours long?) there aren’t too many lulls.  I sat down and watched all five episodes at once, so obviously my interest was held from episode to episode.

“Dead Set” is recommendable for fans of the genre looking to see some flesh hungry undead and eviscerations, but reinventing the wheel they are certainly not.

Written by Ryan Venson

Here’s the main problem with “Black Water. ” The DVD art sucks.

I’m serious.  This is a movie I must have overlooked a thousand times because of its subpar American marketing.  Not that the original Australian movie poster (http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3093533440/tt0816436) is all that much better but, geez, look at the cover of this bad boy.  It looks cheaper than cheap.  Heck, see that snake creeping up on our heroine?  THAT’S A CROCODILE!  More on par with something you would turn off after ten minutes if you stumbled upon it on the Syfy channel.  Like, say….this maybe? (http://www.allrovi.com/movies/movie/venomous-v257003).

Turns out this film pretty much exceeds every expectation you could possibly have for it based on the images of Hasselhoff being chased by CGI snakes it instantly brings to mind (http://www.dvdactive.com/news/releases/anaconda-3-offspring.html).

The film starts out with our three main characters headed to visit a croc park.  Grace (Diana Glenn) and Adam (Andy Rodoreda) are in a relationship together, and Lee (Maeve Dermody) is tagging along.  The next day the trio decide to take Backwater Barry’s Alternative River Tour.

When they arrive Jim (Ben Oxenbould) takes them out on a fishing expedition in to the river, where their boat is capsized by a giant crocodile.  Grace and Adam swim to a nearby tree and shimmy up, Lee climbs on to the bottom of the capsized boat, and Jim is taken by the conniving reptile.

Films such as this one walk a fine line between suspense and tedium.  There’s a certain surprise when the croc makes his appearance at only 15 minutes in to the film to strand our unwitting participants.  How can this film continue for another hour plus?

In many ways “Black Water” is comparable to “Jaws.”  Not that it’s a classic, per se, but it uses a similar sense of inferred terror and paranoia over blatant CGI.  Oh, and dangerous water-based villains.  After he leaves with Jim’s body, the three friends aren’t even sure the croc is still there.  Why would it just be hanging out?  Shouldn’t it be safe to just go turn the boat over and get out of there?  The croc makes few appearances, but doesn’t look cheesy at all.  I would venture to say they used a lot of shots of real crocodiles in this film.

I checked this movie out after running across it on rottentomatoes.  A movie I thought looked “Ankle Biters” generic (http://www.allrovi.com/movies/movie/ankle-biters-v274918) was sitting at 79%.  My interest was piqued.  And, I have to say, this turned out to be a REALLY good movie.

The sense of dread the three are experiencing is palpable, the director ratchets up the suspense in some creative ways, and the cinematography is beautiful.  There are, of course, some lulls.  You can only do so much with three people stranded in such a small area.  But it’s much better than trying to flesh out the film by having the characters, say, hang out at a bar for 15 minutes, than at a hotel for another 15, maybe an unnecessary and drawn out argument between the boyfriend and girlfriend, etc, etc.  Getting in to the “action” quickly grabs your interest early and the film does a good job of keeping it.

Maybe it’s not Jaws, but for a generation of movie-goers who may not have seen the film, it’s a well-made foray into a genre usually filled with cheap, repetitive tripe.

Written by Ryan Venson

Starring: David Dukes, Niall Toibin, Ronan Wilmot

Directed by: George Pavlou

“Rawhead Rex” is a demon.  He is born forth out of the ground when a lightning bolt strikes a giant stone phallus jutting out of the Earth for no discernible reason.  I mean, the stone doesn’t appear to be there for a reason, and any explanation as to why Rex appears also has no reason.  I found this to be a reoccurring theme throughout the film.

Upon his birth (or resurrection, I suppose) from the dirt of the earth, a woman at a nearby church is burnt by the altar (the reason?  You guessed it!).  Said church also contains a stained-glass window depicting Rawhead being cast down by a faceless figure.  It’s part of the Old Testament, I think.

We’re introduced in to all the main characters here:  Howard Hallenbeck, our hero, and his family, a wife and two adorable children. Reverend Coot, the obviously doomed reverend of the church.  Declan O’Brien, the soon to be disciple of one Mr. Rex, who acts suspiciously even before he become obsessed with the creature, delivering every line of dialogue with unnecessarily long pauses and the shiftiest of eye movements.

Soon Rex makes his first kill at a nearby cottage.  The budget obviously called for little to no special effects, and to illustrate Rex’s ferocity the director mainly chooses the old “pick him up and shake him around a bit” style of murder.  After which the victim always has a smudge of blood on his face or something.  You know, to show he’s deceased.

During this scene he leaves a female survivor, which seems to indicate he is scared of women, but later he picks one up, tears her clothes asunder, and throws her against a tree.  Pfh, men.

When I was getting ready to write a review for “Rawhead Rex,” I stumbled upon some interesting notes about the film at www.Clivebarker.info.  I think, most of all, I was interested in how Barker had meant this to be an almost entirely phallic tale.  See?  Rawhead?   The monster himself was supposed to be a phallus and, thusly, really was supposed to be afraid of women, using his brute strength to terrorize them as a defense mechanism.

What we got instead was a monster movie with a beast looking somewhat like a cross between Bebop from TMNTand the action figure D. Compose from The Inhumanoids, with a little touch of He-Man thrown in.  Apparently, he hates trailer parks, as nearly every victim comes from one.  In Barker’s mind it was supposed to be more figurative.  More or less Rex really was a giant penis.  Can’t see how that didn’t go over well in the developmental stages with old “Alpine Pictures.”  Here’s the short of it.  The subtext in a Clive Barker novel does not translate well to a feature length film.

The acting in this film is beyond terrible.  Every emotion is expressed by yelling.   Declan O’Brien (Ronan Wilmot) is the worst of all.  He screams and growls throughout the film.  Even when he is laughing he seems to actually be screaming.  I am in disbelief he ever found work again.

The filmmakers of this particular piece have nothing to hang their hats on really.  A poor script with poor editing, direction, and acting.  If you have stomach enough to make it through the first 50ish minutes of the film, you will eventually be rewarded with a climax that is so laden with 80s cheese you almost can’t help but enjoy it a little.  There are unnecessary explosions, completely incoherent editing, characters popping out of nowhere for no good reason and the greatest baptism scene put to film.

Of particular ridiculousness is the final showdown with Rex, which involves what I believe is supposed to be a pregnant female idol, representing both sexuality and fertility, but looks a little more like a fossilized dinosaur turd.  One that shoots blue lasers willy-nilly at unsuspecting demon spawns.  If that doesn’t pique your interest, it’s pretty safe to say you can probably pass on Rawhead Rex.

Written by Ryan Venson