Thursday, April 26, 2018

VODepths: 'For the Coyotes,' 'Josephine Doe,' When the Starlight Ends'

For the Coyotes (James Carpenter, Joshua Schell, dir. Eric Daniel Metzgar) It's not too surprising that the small-scale two-character drama For the Coyotes was at one time meant to be a stage play, since writer-director Eric Daniel Metzgar plays out many of the scenes between dying religious scholar Wendell (James Carpenter) and his tech-entrepreneur son Josh (Joshua Schell) in static long takes, as the two sit at a table or stand in Wendell's kitchen and rehash their past. Estranged for years, father and son reunite when Wendell calls Josh and insists he come to Wendell's remote rural home, where Wendell reveals that he has terminal brain cancer. The title refers to Wendell's wish for a so-called "sky burial," leaving his body to be devoured by wild animals, which Josh vehemently opposes, at least at first. Although Metzgar throws in lots of arty nature shots and ponderous philosophical and religious soliloquies, this is at heart a fairly predictable drama about reconciliation between parent and child as one is about to depart the mortal world. The lead performances (especially from Carpenter, selling Wendell's spiritual bullshit) are impressive, and some of the images are pretty, but the story is rather superficial despite its existential musings, and the characters' arguments are mostly tedious and repetitive. Available on No Budge (free) and Vimeo.

Josephine Doe (Erin Cipolletti, Emma Griffin, Elisabeth Bennett, dir. Ryan Michael) The title character of Josephine Doe (Emma Griffin) is a figment of main character Claire's imagination, but it's never quite clear why Claire is having such a vivid, realistic hallucination, what kind of condition she might be suffering from, or what anyone can do about it. As a portrayal of mental illness, this movie is borderline irresponsible, although it's obviously more interested in being a lyrical drama about dealing with grief and family trauma, at which it's only marginally more successful. Erin Cipolletti, who also wrote the screenplay, gives a strong performance as Claire, who's reeling from the death of her father and clashing with her more stable sister, but her motivations remain opaque. Josephine is sort of a manic pixie dream girl type of imaginary friend, wearing quirky clothes and pushing Claire to do wacky stuff like break into a roller rink to go skating in the middle of the night. I kept waiting for some kind of twist that would explain why no one is more than mildly concerned about Claire's full-on manifestation of another person, but it never came. The black-and-white cinematography is sometimes evocative, but it seems to be standing in for other artistic ambitions that are never quite achieved. Available on Amazon and elsewhere.

When the Starlight Ends (Sam Heughan, Arabella Oz, Sean Patrick Flanery, dir. Adam Sigal) Thanks to star Sam Heughan's newfound fame and sex-symbol status on Outlander, terrible micro-budget romantic drama When the Starlight Ends is certainly reaching more viewers than it otherwise might have. I haven't watched Outlander, but Heughan's performance here is pretty bad, delivered with a horribly unconvincing American accent. He's not helped at all by the writing from filmmaker Adam Sigal, who sticks Heughan with nearly nonstop pompous voice-over narration from his character Jacob, a supposedly great writer who spews nothing but self-important pretentiousness. Jacob is devastated after he's dumped by his girlfriend Cassandra (Arabella Oz, daughter of TV's Dr. Oz), and he spends the entire movie moping and rehashing their relationship, via flashbacks as well as annoying "writerly" fantasies in which he casts Cassandra as different women he might meet and fall in love with. The distinction between past and present and between reality and fantasy is blurry at times, but not in a clever or illuminating way; it mostly just comes across as sloppy filmmaking. Jacob is insufferable, and his relationship with Cassandra never has the grand romantic feel that the movie needs in order to justify itself. Available on Amazon and elsewhere.

Friday, April 13, 2018

Triskaidekaphilia: 'Dementia 13' (2017)

On the 13th of each month, I write about a movie whose title contains the number 13.

The only reason that anyone pays attention to the original 1963 Dementia 13 is that it's one of Francis Ford Coppola's earliest films; otherwise, the typically rushed and incoherent Roger Corman production would likely be forgotten, or known only to hardcore B-movie connoisseurs. Even with the Coppola connection, it's still a bit of a stretch to think that the movie has such a recognizable brand name that it's worth remaking; I suspect that a large part of the reason that producers latched onto the idea is that the original has fallen into the public domain, and thus can be remade by anyone without bothering with licensing.

"The source material is free" is, of course, not a great reason for making a movie, and Richard LeMay's 2017 remake of Dementia 13 never really offers up a better one. It's not like the original story is brilliant, anyway: Like most early (and later) Corman movies, it was produced in a mad rush, and Coppola's screenplay is more or less nonsensical, made even more so by mandated reshoots that were added at Corman's insistence by another director. The best thing about Coppola's film is its eerie atmosphere, something that comes from filmmaking technique and not from narrative. LeMay is no Coppola, to put it mildly, and screenwriters Dan DeFilippo and Justin Smith add a bunch of extra material to the original story, making the incoherent narrative even more of a mess.

It still takes place at a remote estate, where a woman who's married into an eccentric family tries to wrangle an inheritance following her husband's sudden death. Here, though, that woman is a con artist who straight-up murdered her husband, and the filmmakers add a group of home invaders and an actual ghost to the original story of family secrets and a mysterious killer. Although the story is streamlined in certain ways thanks to what was probably a more straightforward production process, it's still convoluted and ultimately pretty meaningless, and without the kind of unsettling style that Coppola brought to his film, it's just another cheap straight-to-VOD quickie. The acting is passable at best, the scares are rote, and the characters are pretty much all unlikable, which means that the primary entertainment value is in waiting for them to die.

Only the location looks impressive, a sprawling estate that conveys the isolation and eccentricity of the central family. LeMay makes the most of it, shooting all over the grounds and in the surrounding woods, relying on the creepy emptiness of the scenery to stand in for any narrative thrills. In a way, this movie is perfectly in keeping with the original, which was an opportunistic add-on using money left over from a previous Corman movie, churned out on a tiny budget as quickly as possible, to fill out drive-in double bills. The glut of movies on VOD and streaming services are the modern equivalent of that, and while it's unlikely that LeMay will become the next Coppola, he's managed to capture the spirit of one of the legendary filmmaker's early efforts.