Category Archives: indie

A post-Millenium Catcher in the Rye with Kieran Culkin as a cuter-than-thou Holden Caulfield pretty much sums up 2002′s Igby Goes Down.

not bad

Back in the mid-90s, a lot of writers and directors in Hollywood wanted to make the next Pulp Fiction. And every studio wanted to release it, which probably explains how a guy like Klaus Hoch, who’d been hanging around Hollywood looking for a break, was able to get the green light to make Flypaper.

This is a very strange movie which just can’t bring off the combination of hardcore and comedy the way Tarantino did. Hell, even Tarantino had trouble with the formula in his followup. Hoch sets in motion a bunch of characters who slowly are drawn into each others’ orbits. Mostly, since he leaves a few loose ends hanging. There’s a sense of absurdity that kept me watching (well, that and the sexual nudity of Lucy Liu and Sadie Frost).

Mildly recommended

What is the measure of a man? That’s the question writer Tony Gayton asks us to consider while watching 2002′s The Salton Sea, a quote he takes from Plutarch: “The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.” Gayton gives us a single man who’s had to take on a second identity, due to misfortune, and then asks which is the true man.

Director D.J. Caruso takes this script and creates a film that attempts to infuse it with the spirit of the Beat poets of the ’50s. Characters are addicted to methamphetamine, crank or gank, and the movie tries to ride along at the rhythm of a trip that’s gone on and on, extended by snorting another line, then by shooting up, over and over. But he misses out on what any movie requires: a dramatic rope that pulls the audience along, deeper and deeper, until the climactic release.

Val Kilmer plays the central character, born Thomas Van Allen but transformed into Danny Parker a year before the events of the movie when his beloved, adored wife is murdered in front of his eyes by a crew ripping off some meth dealers. A death for which Van Allen must hold himself responsible, since they’re only at this house because he’s lost driving them somewhere unspecified and needs directions, and which he survives only by virtue of having gone to take a piss and therefore not visible to the killers.

He becomes Parker in order to take revenge on the killers. He completely changes himself to be this new identity, covering his body with outrageous tattoos, ear piercings, heavy silver rings and jewelry, sweeping his hair up into a Mohawk, and, most importantly, becoming a tweeker, an addict, to infiltrate the world and create an opportunity to have that revenge.

Caruso opens the movie at the end, Kilmer sitting in a room on fire, playing Van Allen’s trumpet, in a voiceover that asks the audience to decide which persona is real. But sequence is handled poorly throughout with few but random jumps in time. Gaydon and Caruso also insert subplots and characters that only exist to bring this Beatnik existence to the screen since it has little relation to the main story, except to sometimes help Parker advance his agenda.

For all that I’ve focused on the negatives, I do think Salton Sea has its positives too and is a movie worth watching. Kilmer pulls off a difficult role, Vincent D’Onofrio is too much as another dealer named Pooh-Bear, Peter Sarsgaard has a small but well done part as Kilmer’s pal, and the ever-surprising B.D. Wong is, well, too hard to explain without spoiling the ending.

An intriguing, stylish movie

From New Zealand, 2001′s Stickmen shows that no budget and no access to fancy digital effects doesn’t mean no movie. Like many an independent movie, it’s quite good even though it wasn’t made in Hollywood.

The central plot revolves around pub pool and a high stakes tournament sponsored by the local mobster. We know who Daddy is because he owns the escort service and because he cuts people up when they don’t repay the loans he’s made them. And Daddy isn’t too happy when Jack, Wayne, and Thomas, our heroes, turn out to be quite the players after the three are assigned long odds in the tournament.

In the middle of the movie, the two main female characters Karen and Sara are talking in a bar. Karen tells a story about a man and says, “The moral of the story is that men are stupid.” Sara responds, “That’s the moral to a million stories.” I suppose they’re right, though it was the accents that made it sound so hot. These two are quite integral to the ending, in a surprising way.

I was quite surprised to find that this is the first film Hamish Rothwell directed and the first screenplay Nick Ward wrote, not to mention the first starring/significant roles for most of the cast. The script has very few obvious flaws, coincidences, or bad choices–as I wrote this sentence I checked IMDB and found out, sure enough, that it won a bunch of the top prizes at the 2001 New Zealand Film and TV Awards: Scott Wills (as Wayne) for Best Actor, Ward for Best Screenplay, Rothwell for Best Director, and Luanne Gordon (as the honest prostitute Lulu) for Best Supporting Actress in her first feature film

According to the film’s website, Stickmen (the name under which our boys team for the tournament), was one of the half dozen most profitable movies made in NZ in the past 20 years, as well as one of the first NZ-produced films to merit a DVD release.

Definitely recommended, cheers for Tivo!