THE DISASTER ARTIST (US - 2017) Directed by James Franco. Written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. Cast: Dave Franco, James Franco, Seth Rogen, Ari Graynor, Alison Brie, Josh Hutcherson, Jacki Weaver, Zac Efron, Megan Mullally, Sharon Stone, Melanie Griffith, Paul Scheer, Jason Mantzoukas, Hannibal Buress, June Diane Raphael, Andrew Santino, Nathan Fielder, Charlyne Yi, Bob Odenkirk, Jerrod Carmichael, Zoey Deutch, Randall Park, Casey Wilson. (R, 104 mins) Since making his mark nearly 20 years ago on the ignored-and-now-iconic cult TV series FREAKS AND GEEKS, James Franco has had one of the strangest careers of any mainstream Hollywood actor. He's one of the industry's most tireless workaholics, with some extremely unpredictable choices that often border on some kind of obscure performance art. He appears in box-office blockbusters (Sam Raimi's SPIDER-MAN trilogy, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES), hit comedies (PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, THIS IS THE END), played the bad guy in a Jason Statham movie (HOMEFRONT), stars in acclaimed indies (SPRING BREAKERS), barely-released European art films (Wim Wenders' EVERY THING WILL BE FINE, Werner Herzog's QUEEN OF THE DESERT), Lifetime movies (the remake of MOTHER, MAY I SLEEP WITH DANGER?), has an Oscar nomination for Best Actor (127 HOURS), did a three-year recurring stint on GENERAL HOSPITAL, frequently turns up in uncredited cameos (THE HOLIDAY, the remake of THE WICKER MAN, NIGHTS IN RODANTHE, THE GREEN HORNET, ALIEN: COVENANT), has published several collections of poetry and short stories, created a multimedia presentation based on the late '70s/early '80s sitcom THREE'S COMPANY, starred in the TV series 11.22.63 and THE DEUCE, earned a degree in Creative Writing in the mid '00s while maintaining his film and TV work schedule, and more recently, taught film courses at UCLA. For the last several years, he's been in an average of ten movies a year, and has somehow found the time to direct over 20 feature films, most getting very limited exposure and some still unreleased, ranging from the experimental CRUISING riff INTERIOR LEATHER BAR to biopics (he directed and starred as poet Hart Crane in THE BROKEN TOWER) to gothic horror (THE INSTITUTE), and most notably, an ongoing series of classic American literature adaptations (William Faulkner's THE SOUND AND THE FURY and AS I LAY DYING, Cormac McCarthy's CHILD OF GOD, and John Steinbeck's IN DUBIOUS BATTLE). Franco's oeuvre as a director has been commonly described as self-indulgent at best and unwatchable at worst, but he remains undeterred: he's got five directing efforts scheduled for release in 2018.
With that in mind, it's easy to see why Franco the filmmaker might feel some sense of kinship with Tommy Wiseau, the auteur behind 2003's THE ROOM, the midnight cult movie sensation that's become one of the most beloved bad movies of all time. Based on the 2013 memoir by ROOM co-star Greg Sestero, THE DISASTER ARTIST chronicles the friendship between Wiseau (Franco) and Sestero (James' younger brother Dave Franco) that began in a San Francisco acting class in 1998. 19-year-old Greg lives with his mom (Megan Mullally) and dreams of being an actor, but he's too shy and lacking in confidence in front of an audience. Enter Tommy, a long-haired, enigmatic mystery man of unknown origin and indeterminate age who gives the class an overwrought, climbing-the-walls, writhing-on-the-floor, pelvic-thrusting version of the "Stella!" bit from A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Greg approaches Tommy about practicing some scenes together, and though he's a terrible actor, Tommy's fearlessness inspires Greg and almost immediately, the pair move to Los Angeles to pursue their acting dreams. They live in Tommy's L.A. apartment--a self-described "pied-a-terre" that he rarely uses. Tommy also drives a Mercedes and seems to be independently wealthy, but refuses to discuss his past, his money, or his age. Greg soon lands an agent and gets a few small gigs and a girlfriend (Alison Brie, Dave Franco's offscreen wife), while Tommy, with his strange appearance and even stranger accent, goes nowhere and grows increasingly jealous of Greg's relative "success." With both of their careers seemingly stalled before they even begin, Tommy considers giving up and going back to San Francisco but when Greg half-jokingly suggests they make their own movie, Tommy takes him seriously.
Tommy spends nearly three years writing THE ROOM, a drama with obviously semi-autobiographical plot elements, including a woman who broke his heart by cheating on him with his best friend. Tommy casts himself in the lead role of Johnny and Greg as his best friend Mark. Tommy also intends to direct the film, despite having no filmmaking experience. This is evident when he chooses to go the significantly more expensive route of buying the camera and sound equipment instead of renting, and when asked if he's shooting in 35mm or digital, he impulsively blurts out "both," which requires two different crews of technicians, but Tommy doesn't care because "I have a vision!" He pays to have sets constructed that look exactly like the real locations right outside the studio, which thoroughly baffles experienced script supervisor Sandy Schklair (Seth Rogen), who's worked on real movies and TV shows and immediately recognizes that Tommy has no idea what he's doing. But Tommy perseveres, making the film he wants to make while alienating a good chunk of the cast and crew, including Greg, with a turning point being his berating female lead Juliette Danielle (Ari Graynor) over a couple of small pimples on her chest that he insists will ruin their sex scene. By the time filming is finished--it's no surprise that Tommy goes over schedule--the budget balloons to $6 million and he doesn't even bat an eye at the cost.
What makes THE DISASTER ARTIST work as well as it does is the respectful approach James Franco takes--both as a director and an actor--to Wiseau. It would've been easy to make a snarky and mocking takedown, but Franco seems to genuinely admire the eccentric auteur. And he's perfect in the role, nailing his garbled, vaguely Eastern European accent (Wiseau repeatedly claims to be from New Orleans) and his mannerisms, right down to every facial expression. THE ROOM was a film whose early cult consisted of celebrities telling their friends about it--both James and Dave Franco, Rogen, and others like Kristen Bell (who acquired a print and would screen it for friends at her house), Paul Rudd, Patton Oswalt, Kevin Smith, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, David Cross, J.J. Abrams, and VERONICA MARS creator Rob Thomas, who began slipping ROOM references into episodes of the show. Like THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, THE ROOM took on a life of its own on the midnight movie circuit, with audiences throwing plastic spoons (a reference to a strange photo of a framed spoon in Johnny's house) and tossing footballs around, which characters in the film always seem to be doing. And there's so much quotable dialogue, from "Oh, hi Mark," to "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!"
Tommy Wiseau, James Franco, Greg Sestero, and Dave Franco
at an early 2017 screening of THE DISASTER ARTIST
Making his most accessible, commercial effort yet as a director (you really don't need to know THE ROOM to enjoy THE DISASTER ARTIST, but if you haven't seen it, you should), James Franco clearly adores Wiseau but isn't afraid to show his paranoid and often unlikable side, nor does he shy away from pointing out the genuinely inept elements of THE ROOM--like Wiseau's bizarre choice to have Johnny laugh at a story Mark tells about a friend being nearly beaten to death, or one character's announcement that she has breast cancer never leading anywhere or being referenced again ("It's a twist!" Franco-as-Tommy explains, obviously not knowing what a plot twist is), and James Franco matches Wiseau's utter lack of self-consciousness with the auteur's tendency to lay himself bare when a ranting Tommy demands his thrusting ass be the center of attention in a sex scene. There's a fair amount of dramatic license taken for sure, but THE DISASTER ARTIST is a funny, heartfelt, and sincere love letter not just to a movie that's brought joy to a lot of people (of course, Wiseau now insists much of the film was meant to be funny), but to all of the misguided souls whose dreams are too far beyond their capabilities--few soundtrack choices this year are more perfect than Faith No More's "Epic" playing as Tommy and Greg walk to the set in slo-mo on the first say of shooting ("You want it all but you can't have it!") . Be sure to stick around for the credits, where several ROOM scenes are played side-by-side with dead-on, perfectly-matched recreations by the in-character cast of THE DISASTER ARTIST. I wouldn't be surprised if Franco actually shot a scene-for-scene remake of THE ROOM with his cast to be included as an inevitable Blu-ray bonus feature.
ESCOBAR: PARADISE LOST (France/Spain/Belgium - 2014; US release 2015)
Giving audiences the rare opportunity to see Benicio Del Toro in a movie about drug trafficking, ESCOBAR: PARADISE LOST grants the Oscar-winning actor a role he was seemingly born to play: infamous Medellin Cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar (1949-1993). Unfortunately, ESCOBAR: PARADISE LOST is a tedious misfire hellbent on making Pablo Escobar a supporting character, and there are long stretches where Del Toro, who gained quite a bit of weight to play the cartel head in his indulgent years just before his 1991 incarceration, is offscreen. Rather, the focus is on Nick Brady (THE HUNGER GAMES' Josh Hutcherson), a Canadian who's somehow found his way into the Escobar inner circle on the eve of the boss turning himself over to Colombian authorities. Flashbacks show Nick was a surfer spending time doing Habitat for Humanity-type charity work in Colombia in the mid '80s with his older brother Dylan (Brady Corbet) and his wife Anne (Ana Girardot). Nick meets and quickly falls in love with nurse Maria (Claudia Traisac), who happens to be the beloved niece of her protective uncle (you guessed it) Pablo Escobar. Nick is welcomed into the family and affectionately dubbed "Nico," but tries to keep a distance from knowing too much about Uncle Pablo. Escobar is lauded as a benevolent hero by the people after his 80% stake in the world's cocaine traffic has made him a multi-billionaire with some interests in legitimate businesses, like opening a hospital for his nurse niece. But Escobar is a powerful and merciless boss who doesn't like loose ends, and he wants them all tied up before he goes to prison. Nick realizes far too late that he knows too much and the lives of everyone he loves are in danger and that Uncle Pablo intends to have him killed.
The directorial debut of Italian actor Andrea Di Stefano (Dario Argento's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, and Hollywood fare like EAT PRAY LOVE and LIFE OF PI), ESCOBAR: PARADISE LOST is plodding and sluggishly-paced, perhaps because you aren't expecting a movie alleged to be about Pablo Escobar to instead focus on Peeta Mellark and his Colombian girlfriend. Del Toro pops in and out of the story with the majesty of a slovenly Don Vito Corleone, but the bulk of the film focuses on Nick, who's based on a person who was involved with Escobar's niece, but beyond that, his story as presented here is a work of fiction, which begs the question "Who cares?" Di Stefano has essentially dropped the character of Pablo Escobar into a Josh Hutcherson movie that could just as easily be titled THE MEDELLIN GAMES. Things pick up when Nick realizes he's a target and Escobar's men start pursuing him, but then the story just becomes an excuse for Hutcherson to play a suddenly gun-toting, blood-splattered badass blasting caps into some cartel flunkies. After a deadly dull opening hour and change, it at least belatedly comes alive when it turns into a conventional chase thriller, but it's too little, too late. There's one admittedly great scene that's very well-acted by Hutcherson, when he hears an inconceivably savage act on the other end of the line during a phone call, but almost everything else is ponderous, predictable, and boring. The Weinstein Company acquired this in early 2014 and sat on it for a year and a half before releasing it on just 105 screens in June of 2015. Its Blu-ray/DVD release has been expertly timed with the wide release of SICARIO, a far superior Del Toro drug trafficking saga. The actor makes a superb Escobar, but this isn't the Escobar movie he should've done. (R, 120 mins)
MANGLEHORN (US/UK - 2015)
The third chapter in Al Pacino's back-to-basics, character-driven trifecta of low-key indie films following THE HUMBLING and DANNY COLLINS, David Gordon Green's MANGLEHORN lets the Oscar-winning screen legend be eccentric without resorting to his familiar post-SCENT OF A WOMAN histrionics. Pacino is very good here, but the film is a mixed bag, with Green too often engaging in self-indulgent asides and distracting detours into quirkiness that serve no real purpose other than establishing film festival bona fides. Pacino is A.J. Manglehorn, a sad-eyed locksmith in a smallish Texas suburb. Manglehorn works and spends most of his days alone with his beloved cat Fanny and occasionally takes his adorable granddaughter Kylie (Skyler Gasper) to the park. Divorced and mostly estranged from his high-rolling investment broker son Jacob (Chris Messina), Manglehorn laments a life wasted, spent without his lost love Clara. The proverbial "one that got away," Manglehorn pours his heart out in letters relayed in voiceover and mailed to Clara daily, and every day, there's an envelope in his mailbox stamped "Return to Sender." At first coming across like a tragic and lonely old soul, Manglehorn is soon revealed to be abrasive and a bit of an asshole who seems to sabotage his interactions, whether it's an unpleasant lunch with Jacob, where he complains about the food and how he never loved Jacob's mother because she was a poor substitute for Clara, or running into sleazy tanning salon owner/part-time pimp Gary (SPRING BREAKERS director Harmony Korine, in a role that seems like it was intended for Green pal Danny McBride), a socially inept, no-filter type prone to using words like "retard" and "mulatto" in public, but who still idolizes Manglehorn, his childhood Little League coach. Manglehorn has a friendly flirtation with bank teller Dawn (Holly Hunter) that leads to a disastrous date that goes south as soon as Manglehorn does what he always does: surely as THE BIG LEBOWSKI's Walter Sobchak made everything about Vietnam, Manglehorn steers every conversation into another rambling tale-of-woe monologue about how he let Clara slip away.
At its core, MANGLEHORN is a tale of redemption for a bitter, angry man who has some good in him, especially when it comes to his devotion to his granddaughter and his willingness to drain a good chunk of his savings on an expensive surgery for an ill Fanny. But Manglehorn wants Clara and is content to make everyone within earshot as miserable as he is about not being with her. It gets repetitive after a while (though his date with Dawn is a small masterpiece for connoisseurs of cringe), and Green's idiosyncratic digressions--a guy breaking into song in the bank and a teller responding in kind; Manglehorn encountering a multi-car pileup involving a truck full of smashed watermelons that looks like a pointless homage to Jean-Luc Godard's WEEKEND; one scene where he shows off some De Palma-style trickery that comes off like directorial wankery--just get in the way. Green also does some obvious telegraphing with the way he deliberately keeps the viewer out of a locked room that Manglehorn enters daily and emerges in a rage--of course, it's the decades-long shrine for the unattainable Clara, every returned letter filed away, every rejected bouquet of flowers wilted and rotting, which makes him look less like an unfortunate man burdened with a lifetime of sorrow and regret and more like an obsessed loon who needs a restraining order. Pacino's skills help him play a largely unplayable character, and by the time it's over, it's little more than a quirky indie version of AS GOOD AS IT GETS. Even with its many ups and downs, MANGLEHORN is still required viewing for Pacino completists, but be warned going in that it includes a feel-good ending that directly involves a mime. (PG-13, 97 mins)
COP CAR (US - 2015)
Often coming off like a hastily-sketched idea that the Coen Bros. penciled into the margins of a script only to not include it, the acclaimed indie COP CAR has a solid premise that isn't quite enough to carry it to feature length. It gets a lot of mileage from a terrific, frantic performance by a Brimley-stached Kevin Bacon as Sheriff Mitch Kretzer, a suburban lawman whose day goes from bad to worse when his cruiser is stolen by a pair of grubby ten-year-old runaways who take it on a joyride. Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and Harrison (Hays Wellford) are two of the dumbest, most obnoxious brats in cinema history, a pre-teen Beavis and Butt-Head who make one idiotic decision after another, usually involving playing with Kretzer's weapons they find in the backseat and staring down the barrel of the guns to figure out why they aren't firing. They also don't know there's a body in the trunk, the second of two that a coke-fueled, corrupt Kretzer was trying to bury in a field--he was off disposing of the first body when the idiot kids stumbled on the seemingly abandoned cop car. As the kids recklessly drive around the rural outskirts of town, plowing through fields and stopping to point automatic weapons at one another, Kretzer races around town, first on foot, then in a stolen car, then finally in his own pickup, to try and cover his tracks and locate the kids.
Directed and co-written by Jon Watts, who was rewarded (?) with the upcoming SPIDER-MAN reboot based on the festival buzz around COP CAR, the film mostly works as a thriller, but the implausibilities and the plot conveniences abound. It's never believable that Kretzer manages to misdirect all the other cops on the force and keeping them chasing their own tails all day, and it's tough to buy the way he goes about undetected all day long, even when he's pulled over by one of his own cops, calls in a fake emergency to the dispatcher on his cell phone, and manages to go unrecognized, with the now-distracted cop letting him off with the warning without really even taking a good look at him. Bacon is great as the wiry, frazzled, increasingly wigged-out Kretzer, and the child actors do a convincing job of playing--by design--a pair of stupid and truly appalling little shits, though Wellford's Harrison is slightly less loathsome than Freedson-Jackson's cocky, twerpy Travis. There's a couple of other characters--Camryn Manheim as a concerned citizen who spots the kids swerving in the cop car on a back road, and Shea Whigham ends up playing a prominent role, plus Bacon's wife Kyra Sedgwick provides the voice of the gullible dispatcher--but Bacon is the real show here. He's excellent, but the film seems ultimately too slight even for just under 90 minutes. (R, 88 mins)
