Killer Joe

KILLER JOE               B                     

USA  (103 mi)  2011  d:  William Friedkin                    Official site

Friedkin’s second consecutive film based on a Tracy Letts play, adapted by the Pulitzer playwright himself from his first work written in his mid-twenties, is a blisteringly dark morality play exaggerated to gruesome and grotesque proportions by poverty and family dysfunction, where the seedy, trailer trash atmosphere gives rise to violence, corruption, and blatant exploitation.  Initially, the first thought that comes to mind is the Quincy Jones song by the same title Quincy Jones - Killer Joe - YouTube  (5:10), but this is not in the film.  The jazzy musical score, however, from Tyler Bates underlies much of the psychological tension which draws heavily from the sophisticated, underlying groove of the soundtrack.  Shot in and around New Orleans, the film is notable for its distinctive locations, supposedly more than two dozen, where they always seem to be set in the middle of nowhere, suggesting life at the end of the world.  While there are comical elements that turn distastefully extreme, the film is replete with disturbing content, including graphic violence, sexual degradation, and some brutal mistreatment of women, likely spurring cries of misogyny, especially when used to comical effect.  The film challenges the concept of moral order, however, especially the male view, where resorting to criminal behavior (boys will be boys) is deemed acceptable so long as people get what’s coming to them and a semblance of social order is preserved.  At times the film borders on the ridiculous, adding a comic book feel to the woes of trailer park depravity, something along the lines of Frank Miller’s SIN CITY (2005), where sex and violence merge into a twisted and perverse sense of human outrage, which ends up being the closest thing to justice.

Killer Joe (Matthew McConaughey) is a Dallas detective who moonlights on the side as a killer for hire, the stereotypical image of a man in black and an avenging angel who straddles the fence between human salvation and the worst Mephistophelean nightmare.  McConaughey brings a mark of distinction to the outrageously uninhibited role and is up to the formidable task of portraying the personification of evil, playing with unusual relish the moral cesspool he rises out of.  Repulsive and often shocking, Friedkin has created another one of his demented but always provocative horror stories, this one laced in noirish black comedy, often pushing the boundaries of absurdity.  Emile Hirsch, so good in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild (2007), may be slightly miscast here, the only weak link in an otherwise superb cast, is Chris, a lowlife, Texas drug dealer who couldn’t be more of a pathetic loser, always down on his luck, but now in dire need of $5000 he owes to a loan shark.  This sets into motion the family dynamic, as he’s been kicked out of his mother’s house and now comes crawling to his father Ansel, the irrepressible Thomas Hayden Church, excellent here as a passively subdued, always mentally challenged good ol’ boy living in a dilapidated trailer with his sexually extroverted wife Sharla, Gina Gershon, and Chris’s overly protected sister Dottie, Juno Temple, from Gregg Araki’s Kaboom (2010).  Both women prance around in a state of natural undress that borders on exhibitionism for Sharla, but Dottie is the virginal picture of innocence, an angelic creature unspoiled by the world’s darker impulses, where the leer factor enters into play with the audience, veering into sexual exploitation territory, conjuring up lewd and lascivious thoughts.  While the action centers around the men, the heart of the story instead focuses upon the women. 

Desperate to save himself, Chris comes up with the harebrained scheme to hire a hit man to murder his hateful mother, someone he and his father conclude nobody would miss, especially since Dottie is the sole beneficiary of the $50,000 life insurance policy.  When Killer Joe reveals his nonnegotiable $25,000 up front fee, the deal seems off until Joe suggests the idea of a retainer, where he takes Dottie as collateral until they come up with the payment.  These dumb and contemptuous degenerates, who continually bite themselves throughout in the ass, actually rationalize that “it just might do her some good,” cruelly leaving her alone for a dinner date with Joe that she never knew was coming, where the eerie horror of her sexual initiation recalls Treat Williams and Laura Dern in SMOOTH TALK (1985), only becoming more graphically deplorable.  When Joe moves into Dottie’s room afterwards, literally taking over the family, Chris is suddenly repulsed by his own reprehensible behavior and has a change of heart, only to find Joe is in no hurry to let any of them out of his clutches.  This is a film that wallows in its wickedness, relishing its accelerating maliciousness like an after dinner dessert.  The over-the-top, choreographed mayhem that develops is utterly appalling and absurdly ridiculous, perhaps even objectionable, but Joe has to be tarnished by his own wickedness for the final act to matter, as he’s no hero, but a thoroughly disgusting sewer rat.  While both Joe and Dottie are brought together by the most ghoulish circumstances of a Grimm fairy tale, the irony is that when Dottie’s Prince Charming finally arrives he’s a brutally efficient killer for hire.  McConaughey brings a fiendish delight to what constitutes male evil, yet his authoritative masculinity, as opposed to the bumbling and ineffectual father and son act, suggests he’s the kind of man women are drawn to, often without thinking, blinded and deluded by dreams of what they want to believe—that’s Killer Joe.  Beautifully shot by Zooey Deschanel’s father, Caleb, the film concludes with an audacious and sexually haughty choice of music Clarence Carter- Strokin' - YouTube (4:39) playing over the final credits. 

The Trip

THE TRIP – made for TV                   A-                   

Great Britain  (107 mi)  2010  d:  Michael Winterbottom

Quite simply the funniest film seen all year, a masterwork of spontaneous impressions, all of which call into question the legitimacy of one’s identity, beautifully unraveling in a free form exhibition of improvised conversations that seamlessly moves from one fictitious movie character to another, from Michael Caine to Al Pacino, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Anthony Hopkins, Ian McKellen, Alec Guinness, Woody Allen and more, supplanting the real lives of two friends, Steve Coogan (as himself) and Rob Bryden, who is his fifth or sixth, but most likely his last desperate choice as a traveling companion, as they go on a weeklong road trip together across Northern England, all expenses paid by a British newspaper The Observer, to review some of the nation’s most prestigious, upscale restaurants in gorgeously posh historic accommodations set throughout the painterly English landscapes.  Can anyone think SIDEWAYS (2004)?  Coogan initially wanted to go with his girl friend (Margo Stilley) as an attempt to rekindle their lost romance, but she’s too busy trying to establish her own career, so he’s left frantically searching at the last moment for an acceptable fill-in.  Bryden, like Thomas Hayden Church, is utterly brilliant as the mad side kick, giving an incomparable performance that is among the best of the year, where every improvised utterance is a masterwork of comic art that seemingly rolls off his tongue with the ease of talking.  But it’s not just comic timing and flair, as he also reads poems or breaks into song at a moment’s notice, even memorizing bits of literary phrase that are appropriate for the historic realm they are exploring.  Coogan, ever the miserablist, tries not to laugh or show appreciation, as if he’s paid to keep a straight face, refusing to allow anyone to upstage him, but instead heaps as much scorn and abuse his friend’s way as he can, acting as though he is terrible company, but at times they each try to outdo the other’s impressions in a comic laugh off, where the audience is simply delighted at how good these guys really are.  Some of the best moments are when the guys do laugh, where they can’t help themselves, but this doesn’t happen very often, where Coogan is bound and determined to see his friend as a source of endless aggravation and misery.    

Initially shot as a 3-hour British TV series, where each of six visits is a half-hour episode, this is a streamlined version which undoubtedly leaves out choice material, and without it, one can only wonder what’s missing?  So one would guess the original source material would be the way to go, but that’s not how it’s being released in America where only the truncated version is offered.  Even as is, this is unforgettable stuff, endlessly hilarious and filled with intelligent wisecracking wit.  This is also the most gorgeously filmed Winterbottom film since his first real movie success, JUDE (1996), which accentuated with dizzying camera movement the sweeping enormity of the land, and these remain, while at opposite ends of the spectrum, one a wrenching uncompromising tragedy and the other funny as hell, displaying an underlying dry wit, his two best films, largely due to the intensely personal nature of the material.  Here as well, shot by Ben Smithard, the unending beauty of the landscape is a remarkable attraction, seen as their Range Rover SUV whizzes through the curvature of the narrow roadways, often with stone walls on each side of the road, with rolling hills heading off into the horizon, occasionally seen through the mist of an everpresent fog.  Part of the story is watching these guys try to connect back home after dinner each night through the use of a phone, where Bryden induces various sex fantasies with his wife while lying in bed, not at all bashful about embellishing the voices of various celebrity characters, while Coogan is continually seen wandering aimlessly out in the high grass somewhere trying to obtain phone reception, where his conversations are wrought with great difficulty, usually ending badly, where he appears to be the most friendless guy in the universe.  The irony, of course, is that right in front of where he’s standing are some of the most unbelievably gorgeous landscape images, usually in front of a placid lake with the mist rolling by that continually changes the face of the horizon, with amazingly perfect painterly compositions that reflect the still life quality of the moment.    

Some of the food offerings are an amazingly pretentious display of overkill, where it appears grass is included with every serving of a 10-course meal, always accompanied by bottles of wine, where in every instance they are given the best window seat.  Not once do we ever see Coogan do any writing on this assignment, where he instead continually moans and bitches about the apparently stalled state of his career or how his girl friend is not there, while the ever upbeat Bryden appears to be having the time of his life.  Both these guys are evenly matched, intelligent, witty, spontaneous, imperfect, openly flawed, yet they seem to use humor to rise above the moment, finding their humanity in their various impressions.  Rarely does Coogan ever have dinner with Rob Bryden, as instead he’s met with a host of interchangeable characters that eventually drive him batty.  Initially he tries to keep up, matching impression for impression, insisting his are superior, but when we see him alone in his room at night attempting to master various Bryden voice inflections, the audience knows he’s been outdone.  Coogan can be vicious when given the chance, never having a kind word to say about anyone else, while continually seeing himself with delusions of grandeur, actually seeing himself as the Don Quixote of Britain.  Not a chance, as that role would have to go to Terry Gilliam whose lifetime projects have continually been sabotaged and destroyed, seemingly by acts of God.  Coogan shows a great deal of disenchantment with himself when he’s alone, where these solitary moments reflect an off camera persona that is quite revealing, the picture of middle aged frustration, quite a contrast to having to live up to his wish fulfillment dream sequence with Ben Stiller telling him all the American directors are lined up and can’t wait to work with him, which sadly, he has to wake up to feeling more isolated and never more alone.  Once back home in the empty, stainless steel surroundings of his overpriced luxury apartment with sliding glass doors and a balcony overlooking the highway construction project, it appears his life will have to remain a similar project in the making.  

Barney's Version

BARNEY’S VERSION                                               C                    

USA  (132 mi)  2010  d:  Richard J. Lewis 

An erratic and horribly uneven version of the vulgar and boisterous life of Barney (Paul Giamatti), loosely based on the Mordecai Richler novel, who also provided the original source material for the esteemed Canadian film about growing up in Montreal as a Jewish teenager in THE APPRENTICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ (1974), starring a very young Richard Dreyfuss.  They play out as bookends in the author’s life, where Kravitz was a bundle of nervous energy, a smart and overly ambitious  kid who would stoop to anything to make an extra buck, while Barney has already discovered financial success by producing the long-running, yet brainless and sleazy television soap opera O’Malley of the North that resembles Russ Meyer without the sex and nudity.  The performances are excellent, but there's something missing in the tone of the story where the witty sarcasm of the book does not translate well onto the screen.  While it should be this sprawling uproariously funny work, it's instead a fidgety affair with only intermittent humor, much of it way over the top in Jewish stereotype.  Never as nuanced as a Barry Levinson film, the premise is a bit outrageous, where at his second marriage (his first wife committed suicide) he goes existentialist at his own ridiculously exorbitant Jewish wedding to Minnie Driver, which seemingly goes on forever, wandering around as if in an alcoholic daze questioning the meaning of it all, until he sets his eyes on Rosamund Pike, which alters his life forever, immediately falling head over heels for her and telling her so, which is not exactly in good taste at one’s own wedding.  How about waiting a week?  So while that’s the real issue, Barney and his equally candid father, Dustin Hoffman, are portrayed as more uncivilized lower class Jews, not in the same financial bracket as Driver and her ostentatiously rich father, so there’s a wedge between them from the beginning. 

The two don’t appear destined to spend the rest of their lives together and are aided by a miniature side story, which is a film in itself.  Barney’s best man at the wedding is a real loutishly off-color character, Boogie Moscovitch (Scott Speedman), think Thomas Haden Church in SIDEWAYS (2004), a guy that taught Barney everything he knows, his carnal conscience, who’s always high on some illegal substance, eventually becoming a junky that Barney intends to help sober up, inviting him to the summer home, a cabin on a lake, where in a wrong turn somewhere, has sex with Minnie Driver, paving the way for the intended divorce.  But that’s only half the story, as after Driver leaves in hysterics running back to Daddy, Barney has a drunken tête a tête with his friend, which also includes ill-advised playful gestures with a loaded gun.  What happens afterwards is lost in a drunken stupor, or so it seems, as Boogie has disappeared, perhaps shot by Barney, where the police are called sometime after Barney sobers up and drag the lake but can’t find a body.  Barney quickly moves on after this incident, but it stays with him for the rest of his life, where perhaps only he knows what really happened, or more likely, the trauma wiped out whatever did take place from his memory banks.   

Barney wastes no time rediscovering Pike, who he’s been pursuing all along, and who’s rather flattered at the gesture.  And what’s not to like, especially considering he’s an obnoxious, insecure, cigar-smoking alcoholic with a flair for bad taste, and the film does a few time alterations, jumping ahead to when they’re already married with grown children before moving back to early childhood again, where she sacrifices her budding career in the radio business to become a mother of two children.  They appear happily married and content, where she is “the one” for him, but he drinks too much and indulges in only what he wants, like insulting her friends and watching hockey games in bars, leaving her feeling less than satisfied, so when a good looking guy shows up around the lake (Bruce Greenwood), a guy already working in the radio business, Pike gets the urge to return to work, with this new guy, of course.  Barney’s life spirals all out of control, initially suspecting something’s up before he makes a stupid decision on a drunken binge, literally driving her into his arms.  Like the sexual incident in his earlier marriage, Pike uses this for all it’s worth, even having the kids gang up against him, ultimately moving in with the hunk in the radio business, something Barney unfortunately can’t even remember, as he has early onset of Alzheimer’s Disease and continues to believe they’re happily married.  It’s a tragic story of lost opportunities, told with plenty of gusto by a first person narrator who may be known for embellishing as he looks back on his life, suggesting there’s also plenty to be grateful for.  Anna Hopkins as his daughter makes a terrific screen appearance, while brief cameos of Canadian filmmakers Denys Arcand (as the erudite waiter), not to mention Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg (as TV directors) grace the screen.