Wedding Doll (Hatuna MeNiyar)

Mitzpe Ramon overlooking Ramon Crater 

WEDDING DOLL (Hatuna MeNiyar)                      C+                  

Israel  (82 mi)  2015  d:  Nitzan Giladi

Sort of a cross between the emotional fragility of The Glass Menagerie and the societal brutality shown to those who are different in WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE (1995), featuring the travails of an attractive young special needs adult, Hagit (Moran Rosenblatt), whose mental deficiencies and childlike innocence are seen throughout, with a broad, engaging smile that greets nearly everyone, or her angered frustration with her mother, Sara (Assi Levy), whose everpresent, watchful eye prevents the kind of emancipation Hagit desires.  Relentlessly picked on by other kids in the neighborhood who continually tease her and call her names, where in an earlier incident she was traumatized when badly injured from a cruel incident, something her mother has never forgotten, so she tries as best she can to protect her from the outside world.  The problem, of course, is that the more she shelters her daughter, the greater her need for independence, as she’s happiest out on her own.  The film opens in a fragile and delicate world of Hagit meticulously constructing tiny dolls, usually representative of a bride or groom, as there are photos of wedding gowns surrounding the walls to her room.  One might say she is obsessed with the subject, as she dreams of getting married, thinking she would finally be free of the suffocating presence of her mother.  Yet time and again, we see her mother bale her out of unfortunate circumstances, where she obviously has her best interests at heart, but Hagit is smothered by her incessant, overly cautious restrictions, even going so far as turning her mother’s alarm clock off in the morning and sneaking out of the house on her own, only to be found waiting at a bus stop or walking down the road when her mother pulls up to offer a ride, knowing how easily it is for her to get hurt, as she is continually taunted and harassed by mean-spirited kids.  She does have a job to go to, where she works in a tiny toilet-paper factory, where the kindly owner Aryeh (Aryeh Cherner) is aware that he is “helping” her, allowing her in turn to help package his products, while his son Omri (Roy Assaf), seen cutting larger rolls stretching nearly ten feet into smaller more usable products, is just about the only other company employee.  Surprisingly Hagit flirts with him all the time, giving him the most recent doll that she made, where they can be seen kissing behind the scenes, unbeknownst to the owner. 

While there is a predictable structure to the film, edited throughout as a horror film, where from the outset the audience is waiting for some horrible unforeseeable event to occur, the filmmaker is content to postpone the inevitable until the end, constructing a growingly familiar world around the central figure, while at the same time offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the life Sara is secretly hiding from her daughter, as she receives nightly phone calls from an interested boyfriend admirer who would obviously like to spend more time with her than she allows, as she’s required to look after Hagit.  While it’s clear she’s sacrificed her own life for Hagit, but as she grows older, she’d like to think she could have a life all her own as well.  Hagit presses her for independence, yet when she gives it to her, such as leaving her alone to spend the night with her friend, Hagit is never far from her mind, never knowing what to expect when she returns, as she’s haunted by the possibilities, where it only takes a single incident of inflicted horror to damage her life forever.  The one element of surprise is the remoteness of the location, set in Mitzpe Ramon, a small town on a ridge overlooking the Negev Desert, where the scenery is spectacular, including the presence of wild Nubian ibex running free.  Home of the 500 foot deep Ramon Crater, one of Israel’s largest national parks, it contains a natural water source to sustain the animal population, with the crater created by eons of natural erosion, as the region was once covered by an ocean millions of years ago, while now the town supports a tiny population of less than 5000 residents.  Omri has a habit of throwing pebbles on Hagit’s window, which is a sign for her to meet him out on the cliffs overlooking the enormous expanse of the desert, where the vast emptiness may as well be a metaphor for her seemingly unobtainable idea of romance.  To Hagit, Omri’s love is real, where she expects they will be married one day, so she roundly rejects the friendship of other special needs male companions that her mother arranges to come and visit.  Her refusal to even come out of her bedroom during visits is hurtful to the other boy, who has to face his own constant stream of societal rejection.

While the film fully explores the lives of mother and daughter, Sara, burdened with the responsibility to care for Hagit, is unable to spend much time with her married son Chen (Tomer Kapon) and his newborn baby, whose own views towards his sister are somewhat backwards, believing she belongs in an institution or a group home, still stinging apparently from an incident where Hagit nearly dropped his baby, unable to summon the trust afterwards.  These same thoughts run through Sara’s mind as well, constantly wondering what’s best for Hagit, visiting group homes and trying to imagine her daughter living there, where it’s a daily struggle to face her daughter’s constant resistance to her concerns.  Making matters worse, the factory is continually losing money, so despite Omri’s assurances to Hagit, believing he can change his father’s mind, the factory will be closing soon.  Searching for work elsewhere provides one of the saddest moments of the film, as she applies for a job in a store that sells wedding attire, supposedly the idealization of all her dreams, but they’re looking for a seamstress, while Hagit simply imagines surrounding herself with all the beautiful things in the store all day long, quite a stark contrast to the more crude conditions of a toilet-paper factory.  When the store never calls back, she thinks there’s something wrong with her phone, instead, they simply filled the position with someone who could actually do the job they were looking for, a reality that Hagit can never truly comprehend, as she constantly lives in her dreams.  When the film pivots into Omri’s world, it takes a turn for the worse, as his friends routinely call Hagit a “retard,” making fun of Omri for even hanging out with her, where their unsympathetic nature is ugly and crude, reflecting a miserablist view of humanity that exists throughout the film, where outside of Hagit’s dreamlife are vile haters and mean-spirited people who wouldn’t think twice about having fun at Hagit’s expense, making her the butt of all jokes.  This descent into savage cruelty is not altogether unexpected, but is difficult viewing for the beastly inhumanity on display, where guys think mocking others weaker than they are is just hilarious, getting drunk while feeling her up, even stupidly thinking they’re giving her a good time.  She’s terrified at the craven depravity she’s forced to endure before running away, where the audience has to wonder where can she ever be safe from this coarse treatment, which is the central question asked by this film all along.  While there are no easy answers, this film dwells on the misanthropic, offering little hope in human progress.  The film won the FIPRESCI prize for best Israeli first film, also best first film overall, and best actress for Assi Levy as the mother at the Jerusalem Film Festival of 2015.  

Everybody Wants Some !!

EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!                 C+                                     

USA (116 mi)  2016  d:  Richard Linklater                Official site

One of the reasons we need more women filmmakers is that there are so few stories like this about women, while there are a gazillion male-centric, coming-of-age movies, all targeting a certain period of adolescent indulgence.  Few will be as relaxed and laid-back as this one, feeling like a comfortable pair of old worn out jeans that haven’t been pulled out of the drawer or closet for a while, yet somehow still manages to fit.  For those looking for a nostalgia trip, this one hits the nail on the head, doing an excellent job of recreating a rather innocent look of the 80’s.  Unfortunately for those who actually lived through that era, this may remind you of many of the things you didn’t like about it, as it was the decade of Ronald Reagan as President, yet you’ll find no mention of that in this film.  It’s like leaving Vietnam or Civil Rights out of the 60’s — hard to do.  It was the era when homelessness became prevalent in all major urban centers across America, yet little was done about it, as instead there was a movement afoot to cut taxes and government spending, where the idea of providing services for the poor was starting to become a thing of the past, even ignoring the suicide of the leading advocate for the homeless, Mitch Snyder, who became completely disillusioned after his pleas were ignored by a government that preferred turning a blind eye, using a similar response to the AIDS crisis in New York until after it reached epidemic proportions.  That’s also not mentioned in this film.  To be fair, the specific time period of the film is set in the fall of 1980, the last days of the Carter presidency, occuring during the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis, when Reagan was about to be elected.  It’s funny though how people living their lives during similar time periods have completely different recollections, where it’s almost as if these things never happened—out of sight, out of mind.  Yet here we are some thirty to forty years later and the homeless epidemic continues unabated, where there are even frequent faces of the homeless seen mulling about just outside the theater where this film was seen. This decade was the turning point in American history when poverty became expendable, no longer a condition to be eradicated, but accepted as collateral damage.  Too bad for them, so to speak, became the mantra of societal indifference.  That’s one of the reasons nostalgia pieces aren’t always successful, as they’re likely to be amusing to some, but offensive to others.   

This film plays out like a college fantasia, where the density of the writing suggests this could easily be produced onstage as a theatrical piece (a subversive gay musical comes to mind with an all male review, in the manner of the ANCHOR’S AWAY segment in the Coen’s recent Hail, Caesar!, hopefully directed by Tarnation’s Jonathan Caouette), where there aren’t any real cinematic cornerstones to the film, as it’s more a character sketch of rather doofus college athletes on the baseball team in search of drugs, alcohol, and getting into the pants of members of the opposite sex at the University of Texas in Austin, showing a raucous side of party life that existed “before” the AIDS crisis, though it feels greatly exaggerated here, feeling more like a euphoric romp through Spring Break, satirically viewed as if being a horndog was a permanent affliction.  While some of this is mildly amusing, what stands out is the lack of any real character development, as none of the many featured athletes are really that interesting (with the exception of one guy that pulls an Ally Sheedy from THE BREAKFAST CLUB), so by the end of the picture nothing feels all that memorable.  Less ambitious and entirely calculated, it’s a lighthearted, comedic shift from the more dramatically compelling works of 2014 Top Ten List #1 Boyhood and his Before Trilogy, Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013), all of which get more intensely involved in the character’s lives.  Not so here, as this feels much more generic and homogenized, even a bit homophobic, never really digging under the surface, like it’s trying too hard to be likeable and pleasing, to Dazed and Confused (1993), one might also find traces in the John Hughes teen flick FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF (1986) to find a similar feeling of smug male arrogance, where much of this similarly plays out like a wish fulfillment fantasy sequence.  While it certainly falls in line with a “boys will be boys” scenario, delving into the testosterone-driven subtext of male masculinity, driven by out-of-control hormones and a Southern, sexual swagger, where it seems all guys are competitively vying for the Alpha male top dog title, it conveniently settles into a rhythm of easy laughs and boorish juvenile pranks.  Never really concerning himself with plot in his movies, preferring shared experiences from a specific time and space, the lowbrow tone is established right from the opening shot, with Blake Jenner as incoming freshman pitcher Jake Bradford driving his muscle car through the heart of the college campus to the sounds of The Knack’s “My Sharona” The Knack - My Sharona live (HQ) - YouTube (4:54) while scoping the streets for female ass, finding plenty in every direction, like he’s arrived in pussy Nirvana.   

As we are introduced to the rest of the jocks living in the two baseball houses, it’s an eclectic mix of older and younger teammates, each a bit offbeat and strange, showing an acute disdain for the new guy, where there’s a mystifying amount of peacock strut in every off-putting remark designed to knock someone else off the perch, giving them the green light to take center stage and shine solo.  It’s a weird system of endless competition for top cock on the block, where they all just naturally play this silly game of one-upmanship.  While Finnegan (Glen Powell) is seen reading Jack Kerouac and smoking a pipe, he never stops talking shit shrouded in the verbose language of literacy and philosophy, a kind of smartass know-it-all that loves to ridicule the inferiority and inadequacy of others, while Tyler Hoechlin is McReynolds, the heavily moustached Tom Selleck of the group, a guy that can never get enough of himself in the mirror, thinking he’s God’s gift to women, yet he’s the senior and unspoken leader of the group.  Wyatt Russell is a perpetually zonked California surfer dude turned pitcher named Willoughby, who turns out to be a stoner guru (“You gotta tune in, man”) with an extensive Twilight Zone collection of VHS tapes and a VW van parked outside, while Niles (Juston Street) is the 95 mph fastball throwing pitcher from Detroit that supposedly already has scouts following him, yet he’s so buffed up and full of himself with fake stories and myth that he’s really just a nerdy geek in disguise.  Jake’s own roommate is Billy Autrey (Will Brittain), which might come as some surprise, as all we ever hear him called is Beuter, as his country bumpkin accent is so thick it’s like he was raised in a backwoods swamp, a guy that doesn’t take to jokes or socializing very well, spending all of his time on the phone talking to his girlfriend, while Roper (Ryan Guzman) thinks he’s the epitome of the male species, believing he has the finest ass on the entire campus, accordingly wearing the tightest fitting pants.  Dale (J. Quinton Johnson) is the token black player, yet he’s smooth enough to pass as just one of the guys, usually taking a more relaxed approach, but he’s a sleazeball like all the rest and is in on all the pranks as well.  While there are many more to this motley crew, the group is all bluster, yet they’re feeling no pressure and no pain, as the baseball season doesn’t even begin until the following spring, so the film, oddly enough, counts off the minutes and hours before the fall classes begin, where the entire film is a 72-hour prelude to reality.  Taking a cue from the ultra-conventional style of filmmaking from Clint Eastwood in Jersey Boys (2014), where a succession of stage performances were shown through a series of revolving set pieces, Linklater uses a similar device as the boys head out to the bars and dance clubs to chase after girls, going through a similar change of venue from the Day-Glo disco of the Sound Machine, EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!!! Sound Machine Clip (57 seconds), where they immediately get kicked out, to the URBAN COWBOY look of a country bar, offering a bull-riding machine, cowboy hats, and the obligatory line dancing, to the frantically berserk mosh pits of a punk club, where a group hilariously does a punk version of the Gilligan’s Island theme song, Gilligan's Island Theme Song - YouTube (1:31).

But no college experience would be compete without finding a girl, where an anonymous come-on to a couple of attractive girls from a car stuffed with guys is skillfully rebuffed, but brings success to the guy in the back of the car that keeps quiet, none other than Jake, the driving force of the film, as the slim storyline is built around his initial impressions, which includes a first look at Beverly (Zoey Deutch), who looks strangely familiar, as she turns out to be the daughter of Leah Thompson from BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985), the highest grossing film of the year, also starring in both sequels.  While the baseball boys dominate the film, a tribute to their obnoxious attempts to hit on every attractive girl they see, where they literally can’t help their leering eyes, Jake and Beverly constitute a diversion from all the surrounding madness, where a split-screen telephone call results in their first official date, quickly realizing that opposites attract, as she’s an illustrious member of the theater department, vying with other rabid theater majors for any part in the school productions, where the competition is a huge step up from high school when these two were at the top of the food chain, getting all the recognition, while now they’re both just hoping for an opportunity.  Admittedly awkward at first, where she has a giant poster of Joni Mitchell in her dorm room, they quickly develop a conversational rhythm and an easy feel for each other, developing into romance, as she invites him to a theater party later that evening.  Of course, once they hear about it, all the other baseball bums want a free invite, giving him the business until he relents.  While the film’s music and décor, not to mention hair and fashion styles, are uncannily accurate, it still feels ridiculously silly to witness a scene of all the young dudes stuffed into a car rapping energetically to Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” EVERYBODY WANTS SOME Movie Clip - Rappers Driving (2016) Richard Linklater Comedy HD (1:02), each one carrying their own verse, never missing a beat, where the artificial staginess of the choreographed routine somehow mocks the more familiar natural vibe of this director.  The film is a testament, however, to how routinely guys cover up their insecurities and overall awkwardness, especially at this stage in their lives, turning the art of courtship into a game of showmanship and male dominance, a kind of diversionary pretense where instead of paying attention to the young ladies, it’s still all about themselves, where they remain the center of attention, an egotistical state of mind from which they have no escape.  Part of this is the adulation and special attention that is heaped upon gifted athletes starting from a young age, whether deserved or not, where it creates a euphoric condition inside their own swelled heads that makes them think they are somehow invincible.  While much of this feels like being stuck at an endless frat party, it is a time capsule of a more innocent time when it was easier not to be deluged by the problems of the real world.