Dark Comedy

This Is the End Review

June 27, 2016 by JD Hansel

I watched this film on my last night as a teenager because it seemed like a fun way to mark the end of an era, but it ended up reminding me of the end of a different era. Once upon a time, people made outrageous comedy films that broke new grounds of absurd, all without relying on needless expletives and gratuitous violence to keep the viewers’ attention. Duck Soup, Airplane, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Young Frankenstein, Gremlins 2, Sleeper, Seven Day Week, The Naked Gun, Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Silent Movie, Beetlejuice, CLUE, and of course The Muppet Movie are among the classic comedies that have impressed me by relying on unfathomable absurdity, stupidity, and impossibility to keep the audience entertained, rather than jokes about coke and rape and Michael Cera’s CGI butt-cheeks. Sure, plenty of the movies I listed above have jokes that get rather dirty, and some of them have a bit of language from which I prefer to refrain, but these are secondary to the inherent toony lunacy of the worlds they present. The fact that this movie starts off very realistically, creating the sense that what we’re seeing is meant to be taken as our world, puts the filmmakers in a corner from the onset by forcing them to make light of a situation they made serious.

Think about this: the world ending isn’t a silly concept. The world ending at the hands of a singing plant is a silly concept, and the world ending from an attack by a giant boob is a silly concept, and even the world ending because the U.S. accidentally lets a bomb get dropped on Russia is a silly concept. What’s the difference? It starts with the fact that these are the kinds of ideas that leave people dying to know how in blazes the filmmakers handled them. They’re weird ideas, and they’re hard to wrap one’s mind around. However, I do think that the concept of the world ending because … it’s just the end of the world, in a biblical style, could lend itself to lots of great comedy. The primary problem standing in the way of this is what I mentioned above – the weed of realism is choking the fun out of cinema, and it breaks my heart. All that being said, even though this film is very much in the genre of “just scream profanities” comedy, it has its fair share of clever moments. At the very least I’m impressed with the filmmakers’ ability to get a feminist icon to take part in a scene that essentially boils down to a rape joke (the audio commentary says their goal was to “make it rapey; make that the joke”) which I find ethically unsettling, but still artistically impressive in a mildly evil sense. Given the nature of the beast, it is a surprise that the movie is as clever, creative, and respectable as it is, so I’d give it a passing grade.

Phantom of the Paradise Review

May 23, 2016 by JD Hansel

Whoops. I only meant to watch the first few minutes of the movie before going to bed, so I wonder, how did I end up staying awake into the middle of the night to finish it? Oops. I meant to return it to the library after I watched it, and yet somehow it stayed in my computer with PowerDVD running different scenes from it everyday, which I accidentally kept watching. Oh, poopy – I had other music I meant to listen to, so why have I been listening to this soundtrack so much over the past month? Uh oh, it looks like a Blu-Ray copy of this movie somehow became a priority on my birthday wishlist, even though I had more important needs than another Blu-Ray for my collection. Crap! I wasn’t supposed to be happy that I actually got the Blu-Ray for my birthday instead of an external hard drive!

And to think, horror isn’t really a genre I go for, so I wasn’t even supposed to like this very much. Whoops-a-daisy. By gosh, it sure is amazing what mistakes can be made because of something nearly flawless.

But seriously folks, I can see the movie’s mistakes. I see the inconsistency in the camera quality, and the continuity errors with the Phantom’s makeup. I can tell that the editing isn’t always entirely professional, like when it accidentally indicates that Phoenix has noticed a gun, even though she hasn’t. Somehow, I find these little blemishes to make the movie a little more human, and to make it all the more fun. It is no surprise that this is a ’70s cult classic. It’s a movie I’ve been meaning to see for a while since Paul Williams is always talking about it, and I’m a big fan of his, but I just wish I’d realized that I needed to see it sooner so I could immediately start preaching the good new of Phantom of the Paradise to all the world. I can’t help but feel as though this ignorance was a big mistake on my part.

Whoops.

Deadpool Review

April 9, 2016 by JD Hansel

This is, first and foremost, a comic book movie. I would not consider this to be a farcical comedy film that simply borrows elements from superhero stories, or that parodies comic books in the way that Holy Musical B@man does. This is a comic book movie that borrows from the farcical comedy. When looked at this way, it is a unique and very admirable film, which may even be ahead of its time.

I will address the issue that so many have had with this picture, which is its offensive nature. It is deliberately as inappropriate for children as possible, and many consider it terribly “dirty” or immoral. With as much as I may have been disgusted at times by some of the bloody and/or horrific images used, I do wish to respond to the complaints that it went too far with two main thoughts to consider. The first of these points looks at it as comedy. I very much appreciate Groucho Marx’s criticism of dirty comedy, but I do think that even the filthiest comedy can very good comedy – perhaps even intellectual comedy – if it is cleverly and creatively crafted (and I think even Groucho got a little risque on occasion). In this movie, clearly the writers did put thought and care into the dirty comedy, and most importantly, they used it to ruin, taint, or disgrace the comic book movie, which is exactly the kind of thing that comedy should do. My second point is that the reason why the film had to be this way is to make Deadpool a unique character. He seems to me to be completely separate from both the usual kind of Marvel hero, and the kind of hero that appears in comedy projects based on more official heroes.

Not every little bit of the film is perfect, and far better critics than I have already done a fine job at expressing why/how this is, so I will not waste my time with it. What I will say is that I am pleased that this year has introduced something new and original to cinema, which I think has the potential to make the movies a lot more fun.

Dr. Strangelove Review

October 17, 2015 by JD Hansel

For October, I decided I would review only scary movies, or at least films with monstrous or otherwise Halloween-related themes. The problem is that I didn’t think of this until I’d already watched Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a film that isn’t really about Dr. Strangelove, and that never explains how anyone learned to love any bombs. In a way, this is still fitting for a time focused on scary themes since the threat of being nuked was arguably the biggest scare of the twentieth century. For me, however, the most frightening element of the movie was knowing who directed it . . . Stanley Kubrick.

Kubrick and I have a history. Many years ago (actually it was about a year and a half ago, but that doesn’t sound as dramatic), I was taking a history of film class, when all of the sudden . . . Kubrick.

Evil Kubrick Devil — This image has been stolen from the good people at Channel Awesome, who used this graphic in this excellent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZAzHbUw5W8

When I expected a thoughtful science fiction film that would make me re-think life, humanity, and the universe, what I received was a headache. I expect it’s only a matter of time before I put together some sort of video, article, or other presentation on what it is about 2001: A Space Odyssey that I find terrible, but I’ll try to express it briefly here: if a work of media tries to talk about ideas for the audience to consider, it should use complete sentences. In other words, it should explicate the ideas thoughtfully rather than gesturing towards potential ideas and interpretations that an audience member might project onto the work. After all, if an artist’s work is ambiguous enough, it’ll have all the depth that the individual viewer chooses to see in it, but if the work is detailed enough, its depth will be undeniable. While 2001 is certainly visually detailed, its story is deliberately vague in all of the areas where it should be most expository, making the “storytelling” resemble interpretive dance more than it does narrative. My brain was desperately trying to find meaning throughout where there was none, and since I am not the type to put my own thoughts into the storyteller’s mouth, I found myself bored to tears (not figuratively – literally) and forever terrified of the Dumbfounding Devil.

Then, on one fateful night not so long ago, I dared to watch another of Kubrick’s films – this time the famous comedy Dr. Strangelove – and to my shock I found . . . it was okay. Strangelove is certainly no Python or Brooks film, but it has its moments that really do delight. I was a bit disappointed that there are no noticeable jokes (not in any conventional sense, that is) for the first 35 minutes, but the movie can get away with it because it keeps the audience in suspense concerning what’s going to happen with the bomb. I could still see the Dumbfounding Devil up to his usual tricks again though, including a tedious story, ignorance of the audience’s investment (or lack thereof) in the characters, and a somewhat ambiguous, unsatisfying ending. This isn’t even mentioning that the movie is centered around a fear that is largely intangible to viewers who did not experience the cold war, or the politics of the 1960s, which limits the film’s appeal severely by keeping it from being timeless.

As much as all that bothers me, I think I had a generally good experience watching Dr. Strangelove, and because of a few good laughs and some strong performances by Peter Sellers, I’ll concede that this movie is good. However, I must remain alert, because while Krubrick and I may have had peace this time, we’ll meet again . . . don’t know where, don’t know when. *Maniacal laugh.*

Pulp Fiction Review

March 25, 2015 by JD Hansel

So,there are some movies I’d recommend that people see without any knowledge of what the film is about, what’s going to happen, or who’s in the film. The Truman Show is a good example, as is Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Then there’s a movie like Pulp Fiction. I think I was only able to like it because I knew all about it going into it.

I knew the type of storytelling and approach. I knew it was a weird Tarantino film that would jump around, and I knew he had carefully structured everything so that he was ahead of the audience, and no one could ever predict where the story would go next. I knew he would use everything that the movies have trained us to expect to happen in a story against the audience to trick them. I knew to expect that I would never know what to expect, and most importantly, I knew better than to play The Movie Game.

The Movie Game is my term for when the audience member tries to figure out where the plot is going, and what will resolve everything, with the understanding that the movie has to set up its twists and turns ahead of time, and the story will follow the standard structure. This is partially based on a great quote from screenwriter Terry Rossio: “You know that the audience will try to guess where you’re going with the story. It’s a given. It’s fun. After all, they’re sitting there virtually motionless in the dark for two hours, with nothing better to do but second-guess you.” When The Movie Game is too easy, it’s a boring game, so it’s a bad movie. I played a great game with The LEGO Movie, and the movie won. I beat Frozen, but it was still a good game, and therefore a good film.

Naturally, when I get most upset by a movie is when I feel cheated, particularly because the movie doesn’t follow any normal structure, so I don’t get to play my favorite game. The way to avoid feeling cheated is simply to know what game the movie is playing before going in, rather than assuming it’s playing the same game as I am. What game is Pulp Fiction playing? I have no flippin’ clue, but it’s not quite as fun as The Movie Game.

It’s nice, every once in a while, to see a movie that does storytelling really differently. However, because of how different the storytelling is from what I’d ever seen in a movie before, and because I didn’t get to play the game, it didn’t feel like a real movie to me. It felt like a crazy Tarantino art project. I happened to find out that Tarantino felt the same way about it when it first came out. I respect it since so much in the film is impressive, but it didn’t feel quite like I was watching a movie, nor was it quite as entertaining as a more ordinary film. The entertainment value is lost to some extent when the movie doesn’t build in any normal sense, so some scenes are essentially pointless. Again, they may be impressivescenes, but they serve no purpose other than displaying themselves because the director feels like showing these scenes to the audience because they mean something to him, even though they mean nothing, in some cases, to an overarching story.

I don’t identify with the characters, so they are not my favorites, but they are strong. The dialogue is perhaps more profane than it needs to be, which I generally view as a Cinema Sin of sorts because that generally means the writer is either going for shock value, or simply can’t think of anything meaningful or interesting to write. However, the writing is very, very impressive – Tarantino is pretty darn good at dialogue. The way he interwove the three main stories was clever. The soundtrack is nice overall, and the visuals, while sometimes more bloody than I like, were overall very well done as well.

So, in the end, I really like this movie for what it is, but I don’t know that I like it much as a movie. When I don’t get to play The Movie Game, I feel a little like I’ve been invited over to a friend’s house to play a game with him, but he’s just playing it by himself and encouraging me to watch him; I don’t feel included, and that’s just boring. I think I’ve certainly learned a lot about film, storytelling, and myself from watching it, which means it has good reason to be considered a classic. So, I like it. It’s good. But give up on The Game before it begins, because he just isn’t playing along.

Shaun of the Dead Review

August 17, 2014 by JD Hansel

I generally don’t like comedies that are filled with bloody violence, but after seeing the second movie in the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy, Hot Fuzz, I had to see the first, Shaun of the Dead. Don’t think the blood didn’t bother me – I covered my eyes an awful lot. However, the writing, directing, cinematography, acting, makeup, and effects, were all very good. Several shots in the movie impressed me, as well as the jokes and foreshadowing. Sadly, I am not familiar enough with the cliches in this genre to understand all the things that this film parodies, but the film is still pretty funny.

While I don’t think that this movie was quite as fun for me as Hot Fuzz, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys zombies or dark comedies.