It may be nearly three months yet till National Friendship Day—hey, greeting card company-founded holidays are the most important of all!—but that theme seems to be rife in several new releases this week.
Foremost, of course, is Friendship, a first feature for writer-director Andrew DeYoung starring comedian Tim Robinson as Craig Waterman, a Clovis, Colorado resident who is very, very excited to have acquired a friend. We can see why right from the opening scene, when Tami (Kate Mara) is discussing her recent recovery in a cancer support group. The guy next to her is trying to be “supportive” in his way… but that way is so tone-deaf, annoying and labored, everybody present has to suppress an involuntary cringe, Tami included.
Then we realize, with horror: He’s her husband.
Indeed, it’s something of a mystery why florist Tami is still with Craig—she’s clearly wondering herself—or why their teenage son Stevie (Jack Dylan Grazer) tolerates him, though he’s obviously closer to his mom. At the marketing firm where Craig works, we ponder how he rose to some sort of middle-management position. We aren’t surprised that his coworkers, and in particular his underlings, all get along with each other… with the exception of Craig.
Is Craig a bad person? Well, he’s an oaf, none too bright, has no admirable hobbies or interests, sports a childish trigger temper, few social graces, and a painfully lame sense of “humor.” No, he’s not exactly bad. He’s just incredibly irritating, the kind of personality you act politely towards on a first meeting, then go out of your way to avoid forever after. Of course, Craig is so self-absorbed, he doesn’t even seem to notice people fleeing the scene at his arrival.
That is, until he meets new neighbor Austin (Paul Rudd), a local TV weatherman who is everything Craig is not—smart, ingratiating, full of fun facts, spontaneous, and generous. Misreading boorishness as some kind of ironical quirkiness, Austin whisks him off on a bit of urban exploration that blows Craig’s mind, as does the realization that his new pal is the frontman in an actual rock band. Craig is basically an awkward 13-year-old in a middle-aged body, and Austin is like a 13-year-old boy’s idea of the coolest BFF ever.
Craig is (platonically) smitten. Then Austin invites him over to meet some of his own friends, who are just as cool. Unfortunately, Craig takes this opportunity to reveal who he really is in a faux pas so ugly and inexcusable that none of them—Austin included—ever want anything to do with him again.
At that point Friendship basically turns into a black-comedy stalker tale. Having glimpsed the paradise of social acceptance, Craig cannot accept having blown it. He tries to woo Austin back, then to become Austin, neither of which is going to work. Instead, Craig keeps digging himself a deeper hole, eventually endangering his marriage, his employment, and more.
This could easily have become a gratuitously nasty, mean-spirited film, but DeYoung keeps it oddly sprightly, juggling a unique tonal balance of satire (even Craig’s fantasies are punishingly banal), cringe, and empathy. We don’t like Craig, but we do feel sorry for him, and the laughter generated at his expense somehow never seems unkind. Friendship is a small movie that’s no major revelation. Yet it’s an original that leaves you with a satisfying mix of contrary emotions. It opens in theaters nationwide this Fri/16.
A figure even cooler than Austin (or Paul Rudd) is at the center of Isaac Gale, Ryan Olson, and David McMurry’s Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted, which opens Fri/16 at the Smith Rafael Film Center. The man who was already a successful R&B act as “Little Jerry Williams” in the 1950s and ’60s reinvented himself in 1970 as Swamp Dogg, an alter ego suitable for his wilder artistic impulses.
Still active today at age 82, he’s had a wildly prolific career—writing, producing, playing, and/or performing an estimated 2,000 songs—that’s encompassed many starry collaborations with people from Gene Pitney to Patti LaBelle to Jane Fonda to John Prine to numerous mainstream country artists. Yet somehow, he’s never risen from cult to household-name status.
A new delightfully digressive documentary (complete with animated sequences in the style of Scooby-Doo) gives a fair iceberg-tip view of that voluminous personal output. But its real heart isn’t really Dogg himself, but the community he’s drawn around himself, in particular the equally unclassifiable talents Larry “Moogstar” Clemons and David “Guitar Shorty” Kearny, who at one point are noted as having been permanent guests in Williams’ San Fernando Valley home for 15 years.
Swamp Dogg’s neurologist daughter calls his place a “bachelor pad for aging musicians,” and it is clear that their mutually supportive relationship keeps them all going—not least the host himself, who lost “the love of my life” (late wife-business partner Yvonne) some time ago. It’s an eccentric domestic arrangement by conventional standards, but why shouldn’t it be? Among its many other virtues, Gets His Pool Painted underlines how much better the world would be if more people lived in such situations, bonded by professional and personal affinity.
But isolation takes the fore in two other new movies from China and South Korea. Caught by the Tides, the latest from Shanghai-based Jia Zhangke (Still Life, Ash Is Purest White), weaves elements from his films of the last 22 years—most starring spouse Zhao Tao—into a new narrative, charting the on-again, off-again relationship between model-singer-odd-jobber Qiao Qiao (Tao) and her sometime manager Guao Bin (Li Zhubin). Alternately crossing paths and spending long periods away from each other over a lengthy course, they are mere bit-part players against the gigantic backdrop of a drastically “modernizing” nation.
Zhangke mixes in documentary elements as well as newly shot fiction sequences; his storytelling may be somewhat cryptic, but it is always compelling in bold visual and audio terms. As piecemeal as its construction may be, Caught ultimately has the epic grandeur and poignance of something much more than a film sewn together out of spare parts. It too opens at the Smith Rafael in San Rafael, as well as SF’s Roxie Theater, on Fri/16.
A more conventional piece of genre entertainment is Min Kyu-dong’s The Old Woman With the Knife, starring veteran South Korean star Lee Hye-young—in wizened makeup to look older than her 62 years—as the titular figure. Nicknamed Hornclaw aka “the Godmother,” her terse senior has spent most of life as part of a secret assassin squad, having been rescued by its founder from an abusive situation in her youth. Their form of “pest control” locates “the cockroaches of our society,” miscreants protected by privilege or criminality, then delivers harsh payback. But now she’s getting a bit creaky, just as the operation acquires an antagonistic new recruit in young Bullfight (Kim Sung-cheol), who challenges her authority at every at every juncture.
There was a flurry of publicity a couple years ago when nonagenarian June Squibb appeared in “action movie” Thelma, although in truth she seldom got out of her motorized wheelchair. This character, by contrast, takes (and dishes out) a whole lot of highly physical punishment, to an almost cartoonish degree. Adapted from a novel by Gu Byeong-mo, the movie has a cluttered narrative that’s unconvincing yet takes itself too seriously, problems somewhat compensated for by the very slick presentation. The sum effect is entertaining, yet in the end it’s just a hyperbolic, gimmicky popcorn film without the depth to make Hornclaw’s permanent alienation matter in emotional terms. Knife opens Fri/16 in Bay Area theaters, including the Cinemark Century Daly City.
Moving from the friendless to a character who has friends—but chooses them very poorly—there’s Henry Johnson, a new film from David Mamet. The latter still looms so large in the theater world—a starry Glengarry Glen Ross revival is on Broadway right now—that it’s a little startling to realize his status as arguably the most compelling active U.S. playwright peaked over three decades ago. It’s been a fairly steep decline since, expedited by 21st century stage works that have generally been ill-received. (One that premiered at the Magic here in 2004, Faustus, was among the worst things I’ve ever seen by a major writer.) As he’s simultaneously grown less active in film and TV, a gradual offstage political drift to the far right on many subjects has not made his increasing artistic marginalization a source of widespread regret.
Nonetheless, the ongoing appeal of “classics” from Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974) to Oleanna (1992) keeps reminding us of that vivid, provoking, and singular talent, so it’s nice to say that the new Henry Johnson feels like “old Mamet”—not as good as his best, certainly, but at least strongly recalling his strengths. Discounting the 2013 HBO biopic Phil Spector, it’s the first feature he’s written and directed in 17 years, and so small-scale that for now it’s only available for streaming rental on its own website, with theatrical release uncertain.
A likely very close translation of his recent same-named play, its ultimate impact is somewhat murky. But the often sharp (if also sometimes stilted) language has a familiar, stinging tang you may realize you’ve been missing.
Its titular figure (Even Jonigkeit) is introduced meeting with his corporate boss (Chris Bauer), an exchange that grows uncomfortable as the junior partner is drilled about his support of an old friend accused of a violent crime—this tense interaction culminating when Henry himself is accused of white-collar crime. It lands him in prison, where the next two scenes are with his simultaneously goading and insinuating cellmate, played by Shia LaBeouf. Under the latter’s tutelage, our protagonist undergoes a rapid transformation, such that the last sequence takes place while he’s barricaded into the institution’s library, holding a guard (Dominic Hoffman) hostage at gunpoint.
In each of these four edgy duologues, the not-unintelligent Henry is utterly outfoxed, manipulated against his own best interests—and Mamet, with his perennial interest in predator and prey, views this less with sympathy than as an indictment of weakness. This manliest of manosphere playwrights may ultimately be saying little more here than “Ecch, what a wuss.” But if this schematic exercise doesn’t add up to anything terribly pointed or powerful, it nonetheless commands interest with the bristly concision of at least some dialogue, the economical (yet unstagy) filmmaking, and expert performances.
Finally, mention should be made of a couple films returning to Bay Area screens after previously playing under local film festival auspices. Alex Lamb and Max Well’s The Donn of Tiki, which opened last year’s edition of SF Docfest (and which we covered here), celebrates the high-living times of “Don the Beachcomber,” a larger-than-life figure who basically invented the “exotica” U.S. cocktail, decor, and music aesthetic that peaked in the 1950s.
On Sat/17 it will play SF’s Great Star Theater, and on Sun/18 San Jose’s 3Below Theaters, both events featuring opportunities to wet your whistle with fruity alcoholic drinks. More info here.
Seen three months ago as part of SF Indiefest at the Roxie, Isaac Hirotsu Woofter’s writing-directing debut feature Bound has Alexandra Faye Sadeghian as Bella, a young woman who flees her own abusive domestic situation for the Big Apple. There, she has to cope with life on the streets before gradually finding her own place, physically and socially. It’s opening for a week’s run this Fri/16 at the Alameda Theatre & Cineplex, while also becoming available via On Demand platforms.
