mr-jon-hope Reviews

Entertainment (2015)

What entertains us?

[5/10 · 19 April 2017]

If there is a theme to this movie, it might be the question: What entertains us? The main character stares blankly at telenovelas. He joylessly trudges through tourist attractions. He tells deliberately offensive jokes. He listens to deliberately bad music on endless drives where he occasionally stops to stare at desert vistas. He drinks.

He watches others entertain themselves -- watching the absurdist clown who is his opening act; watching people play games at parties; attending a "chromotherapy" seminar; listening to John C. Reilly sing, or letting Reilly mess up one of the comedian's jokes. The comedian laughs only twice during the film.

The comedian refuses to tell jokes when he isn't in character. He seems to be repulsed by sex, offended by offers of sympathy (from Reilly and Ty Sheridan), and unable to connect with other people. He ruins his celebrity gig. During another gig, instead of telling jokes, he pretends to shoot the audience while blowing raspberries at them.

And we, of course, watch the comedian, waiting to be entertained. Neil Hamburger fans will hear few of his jokes. Michael Cera's cameo is a throwaway. Tim Heidecker fans will be equally disappointed.

Speaking of cameos, Annabella Lwin from Bow Wow Wow plays the tour guide in the first scene, and David Yow from the Jesus Lizard also has a brief scene. It isn't worth watching the movie to see them.

I gave Entertainment a 5 because it left me feeling ambivalent (which may have been its goal). It is neither great nor incompetent. It certainly isn't entertaining.

Border Radio (1987)

Cowpunk noir

[3/10 · 12 November 2015]

An era of LA punk ended by the time Border Radio was released in 1987. Chris D. disbanded the Flesh Eaters, Phil and Dave Alvin split up the Blasters, and Billy Zoom left X. Tex and the Horseheads (whose singer has a scene here, and whose band name is seen on graffiti and t-shirts throughout the film) also broke up. Chris D and John Doe don't perform any music in the film. The band Green on Red is shown playing at the Hong Kong Cafe, and near the end we see a glam metal band called Billy Wisdom & the Hee Shees rehearsing. Border Radio was released in the same year as Guns & Roses' debut and the birth of hair metal.

Spoiler: there isn't much of a story, either. Chris D leaves LA for Mexico. His wife doesn't know why he left or when he's coming back. She sells her car to pay back the money that he stole, then finds out that he already settled his debt. She goes to Mexico to find him; he returns to their home while she's gone. Border Radio has a love triangle, a heist, and some kind of crisis in Chris D's musical career, but each of these plot lines vanishes without climax or resolution.

The Story of Temple Drake (1933)

Broadcast on TCM as part of Pre-Code Classics and Faulkner film series

[6/10 · 17 September 2014]

Faulkner dismissed his novel Sanctuary as a "pot-boiler", although he liked the character of Temple Drake well enough to bring her back in a later novel (Requiem for a Nun). Both novels have greater complexity and moral ambiguity than the screenplay for The Story of Temple Drake could possibly capture in 70 minutes of film. The movie lacks Faulkner's depiction of how rich and poor don't have equal access to justice, but does portray how those who enjoy an elevated social standing aren't always more virtuous than those they look down upon. The elaborate film sets illustrate this when Temple crosses the divide between the elegant party scene and the bootleggers' foreboding farmhouse.

In the novel, the lawyer Benbow (whose first name is Horace) is less enamored of Temple and much more concerned with defending his client Lee Goodwin (and Goodwin's companion Ruby Lemarr) from prejudices both legal and social. In the film, Ruby briefly alludes to prostituting herself in order to get Lee out of prison.

SPOILER: The sudden ending of the film is the opposite of what happens in the book. Suffice it to say that in Sanctuary, Temple is untroubled by conscience and unswayed by Benbow. The bad guy gets away, and the good guy doesn't. It's my favorite of Faulkner's early novels.

Miriam Hopkins does well portraying the two sides of Temple Drake (with a stronger Southern accent than anyone else in the film). Florence Eldridge convincingly conveys her contempt for Temple. Jack La Rue shoots daggers with his depthless eyes, but the screenplay can't possibly capture the complexity of Trigger's character, known as Popeye in Faulkner's underrated novel.