Drunk Bus

In the beginning of Drunk Bus, a film "inspired by real shit," the audience is notified that the story takes place in 2006 (winter, based on the omnipresent snow and winter coats), which was noteworthy for me because I would have been a university freshman or sophomore in the winter of 2006. I also routinely took the campus buses, which were free for students. The driver of the bus in this film is named Michael, a young man played by Charlie Tahan, sporting a winter beanie lots of university students wore then (and now, I assume). Michael, one can tell immediately, hates his job. How could he not? University students are constantly drunk on his bus, after all. 

I had a variety of jobs as a student at Kent State University. Some of them I loved (writing movie reviews for the Daily Kent Stater), some of them I liked (being a waiter or a Resident Assistant), and some of them I hated (being a telemarketer for the university). I never drove a bus, but Michael says out loud that other than nude modeling (another job I didn't do), it's the highest-paying job on campus (a fact confirmed by co-director Brandon LaGanke, another KSU alumnus). 

While I wasn't a bus driver like Michael is, I was thrilled to see the film take place in Kent (though the college is called Kent Institute of Technology), bringing about a rush of memories immediately spinning in my head. As Michael's bus pulled up to a curmudgeonly man with a long white beard, I wondered to myself if this character (whom Michael pleads with to get on the bus) was based on local Kent legend Fuck You Bob. Indeed, it was. He's even called that in the film. For the record, the "hippie-looking" Fuck You Bob was a local artist named Robert Wood, who died in 2012. He was "flippant," to put it mildly, even being told by police in 1992 that he could not enter KSU's campus anymore. Now the world of indie-loving cinephiles can know that such a man truly existed.

However, my initial delight and all the wonderful nostalgia soon evaporated. Nobody likes obnoxious drunk students, but no one does (or should) like movies that glamorize them in the name of empathy. But obnoxiousness is only one edge of this sword. The other in Drunk Bus is a smorgasbord of toilet humor; the movie is completely saturated in it. When the bathroom humor does't work, then we get a lot of screaming and yelling in attempted shots for laughs, whether it's from drunk students being drunk students or someone having an orgasm. It's not funny, either. And when that doesn't work, then we get morbid humor, which is only a step above toilet humor if there were some kind of Bloom-inspired hierarchy of producing comedy. It's frustrating that a film so painfully unfunny has received such acclaimed, and yet it has. As of this writing, it is number twenty-six on Rotten Tomatoes' list of the one-hundred best films of 2021. Yet it's undoubtedly one of the least funny films I've seen in a long, long time. 

Most of the reasons why the film doesn't work as a comedy (beyond its fetish for toilet humor) is that so many of its characters are not interesting or redeemable in the slightest. University-level students aren't always the most likable people in the world, but few of them are as unpleasant as the majority of these characters. Within twenty minutes of Drunk Bus, I found myself caring less and less about any of them or any situation they found themselves in. Halfway through the film, I just wanted the whole thing to be over. It's a particular pity that Will Forte, who plays the sophomoric middle-aged boss who peaked a little too early and now manages Michael and the other bus drivers, tormenting them with flatulence, is spending a lot of his career making overrated garbage like this and the overrated Netflix series Sweet Tooth. 

One character and actor who at least is compelling enough is Pineapple Tangaroa, playing a fictional version of himself. (Tangaroa, a bald Samoan man with tattoos all over his face, was a university friend of LaGanke's.) In the film, Pineapple is hired by the bus company to be security to assist Michael with the unruly drunkards each night. Pineapple's intimidating presence and almost mystic wisdom immediately have effects, with Michael being guided along the way as he learns to stand up to jerks and maybe even lose his virginity. Michael is under a lot of pressure, though, and soon there are fissures in their friendship. They even get into a shouting match, and terrible words are exchanged between them. That's basically the stakes in the film: characters lie to each other, characters hurt each other, and it goes round and round, just like Michael on his constant bus loops. It may work for some, but it didn't for me. 

A big problem I have with Drunk Bus is its hubris. If you were to sit down LaGanke, co-director John Carlucci, and screenwriter Chris Molinaro, and then accuse their Drunk Bus of simply being a movie of the likes of Road Trip, the 2000 road trip sex comedy starring Breckin Meyer and Tom Green, or National Lampoon's Van Wilder, the 2002 college comedy with Ryan Reynolds, they might be offended. Those films, which LaGanke, Carlucci, and Molinaro surely saw when they were younger, clearly influenced Drunk Bus, whether they want to admit it or not. But Drunk Bus isn't Road Trip or Van Wilder, we would be told. It's about...I don't know. Life or youth or friendship or something artsy that the three would clumsily spit out. It wouldn't be a convincing argument. Drunk Bus thinks it's like The Perks of Being a Wall Flower, a coming-of-age tale of young people, but it's definitely more of a Road Trip, a dumb comedy. This one just happens to take place in a bus on the same route, night after night, with copious amounts of sound, fury, and weak attempts at humor all being flushed down a toilet. 

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Charade

 "All I want for Christmas is to make another movie with Audrey Hepburn." So said Cary Grant, Hollywood's amiable king of charisma. Alas, he never got his wish, but one can certainly imagine that a second pairing would have been just as rewarding as the first. The two stars were paired as the leads in Charade, the 1963 film directed by Stanley Donen, that remains possibly the finest film in the public domain. (It ended up there due to a copyright notice error.) Often described as "the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never directed," Charade is one of the most alluring films in cinematic history. Much of it is due to the wonderful pairing of these two. It would be unfair to say they carry the film. Many others involved deserve acclaim for how Charade turned out. But their pairing remains one of Hollywood's most brilliant castings.

Hepburn plays Reggie Lambert, an interpreter working in Paris taking a skiing trip in the Alps. Her vacation doesn't seem to be bringing her much comfort, though, as her upcoming divorce to her husband, Charles, weighs on her mind, providing her a presumably equal sense of liberation and anxiety. While on vacation, she meets a man identifying himself as Peter Joshua, played by the incomparable Grant. He may be quite older than she (something that made Grant uncomfortable during the filming), but she appears quite smitten with him. (Needless to say, as much as romance works, the way Peter sometimes lectures Reggie comes across as very condescending.) Perhaps the two will meet again after Reggie's divorce goes through, but soon the problems commence.

Things aren't quite what they seem regarding Charles. To start, he's thrown off a train (in his pajamas, a reoccurring theme that is pointed out to us). The police detective (Jacques Marin) points out to her that Charles went by a variety of aliases and possessed a variety of passports from a variety of countries, which comes as a shock to Reggie.

At Charles' wake, attendance is low. Aside from Reggie, her friend Sylvie (Dominique Minot), and the detective, a trio of antagonists storm in one by one. Gideon (Ned Glass) takes a good look at Charlie, then promptly sneezes. Tex (James Coburn) enters next; he seems to be an equally suspicious figure, and Reggie doesn't recognize either of them. The third "mourner" is Herman (George Kennedy), a towering figure with a claw hand who bulldozes his way into the church, takes a quick look at Charlie, then violently thrusts a needle into his flesh to determine if he truly is dead. (He is.) Herman leaves immediately. Reggie has no idea what's going on. "Don't ask me," she tells Sylvie. "I'm only the widow."

At the wake, she receives a note from a CIA official named Hamilton Bartholomew, played by Walter Matthau, summoning her to the U.S. Embassy in Paris. There, looking like Dan Aykroyd imitating Walt Disney, he chews on his sandwich rather ostentatiously as he tells her that her husband was involved with the three men at the wake in an OSS operation to deliver $250,000 to the French Resistance during the war; the money never reached the Resistance. Charles was likely killed by someone after the money, and that same person may be after Reggie, believing that she now possesses it. But who is the culprit? Herman? Tex? Gideon? All three? Someone else? In this cat-and mouse thriller/comedy/romance/mystery, Reggie may have three or more murderers after her and this money she supposedly has. Making matters worse for her is the fact that there is increasing evidence that Peter may not be who he says he is. The film is a fantasy, but perhaps the most fantastical element is Reggie constantly believing Peter after every edit to his story.

From her first moments, Hepburn demonstrates her mastery at delivering dialogue, particularly the one-liners aplenty provided by writers Peter Stone and Marc Behm, such as when she asks why Jean-Louis (Sylvie's son) can't do "something constructive like start an avalanche or something." This is a remarkably witty film, and if you like escapism from the way real people talk in the real world, Charade might be just the fit for you.

It's not just the rich screenplay that helps Charade succeed so well. Charles Lang's camera is an active one, whether it's from the perspective of the dead Charles in the morgue or frantically following Reggie as she finds her apartment shockingly empty. The fight on the roof between Grant and Kennedy is effectively shot, and is assisted by Henry Mancini's score, which also adds to the delight of Charade. Incidentally, Mancini's famous score remains the only aspect of Charade that is not in the public domain.

The acting in Charade is, for the most part, top-notch. Hepburn and Grant hit all the right notes, as does Matthau, a performance dripping with bureaucratic aridity. Despite Glass' sneezing in a gratuitous manner that comes across as very unfunny, Kennedy going full boogeyman, and Coburn really reaching for all those Southernisms, they all do a fine job as a trio of menacing villains. Even the boy playing Jean-Louis (Thomas Chelimsky) is fine, or as fine as a French-speaking child actor in a 1960s English-language film could be. Hepburn, it must be said, gives the best performance. But it is Grant who has the funniest bits. In a scene that bathes itself in 60s quirkiness and perhaps even sexual liberation, the two participate in a game at a club involving passing fruit to other people without using their hands. Grant relishes every moment, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes everyone else (characters and audience). These days, just about any character showering in his clothes to flirt with someone would be seen as peculiar at best and desperate and misguided at worst. With Grant, it's effortlessly charming.

I really adored this film the first time I saw it in high school. I've seen it at least two other times since. I cannot say it never gets old. It does, but only because the constant twists and turns are no longer novel. But other elements never diminish. The charm of the two leads is a constant joy. It's a pity they didn't have a cinematic reunion, one as fun as Charade.

This review was originally published on July 19, 2020 at the Public Domain Film Review.

 

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My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To

In My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To, directed by Jonathan Cuartas, two siblings (Patrick Fugit as Dwight and Ingrid Sophie Schram as Jessie) struggle to make ends meet while caring for their ill brother, Thomas (Owen Campbell). Jessie works as a waitress in town, while Dwight doesn't seem to have a job other than to try and fetch the only ailment that helps the sickly Thomas: human blood. Given that Thomas needs to drink blood, it should be quite clear what actually is going on, and I don't think that's a spoiler because we see Dwight and Jessie collecting blood (in a manner you can probably guess) before giving it to their brother, who drinks it in bed. Oh, and he can't go outside during the day. 

These acts of murder and bleeding have become ordinary to the siblings, especially Jessie, who seems the least fazed (at least on the surface). Despite occasionally showing signs of cracking, her steely resolve allows her to sing along to songs on TV even though she stays up late into the night to take care of Thomas before going into work again the next day. Dwight, however, is a wreck, losing more and more of his humanity with each kill. Things start to get complicated for the three: Jessie might target someone Dwight cares about in order to feed Thomas, Dwight soon starts to feel that he cannot keep doing these horrendous acts, and Thomas just wants a friend. One of the interesting things about Cuartas's screenplay is that Thomas' "illness" is never named. Dwight and Jessie only talk about how he's not getting any better. The audience, though, obviously knows what's really going on, yet in the film's mythology and universe, it seems that no one has ever heard of vampires, similar to how the word "zombie" is never used in The Walking Dead. To Dwight and Jessie, there are no vampires, just a sick brother, and they don't know how else to help him. The things we do for family. 

A typical rule of thumb in viewing movies is that if nothing happens in the first twenty minutes or so, nothing will happen for the rest of it. With this one, things certainly happen, but they happen at such a slow pace that some audience members, even horror fans (who often are among the most loyal to their beloved genre) may be turned off. While it is slow moving, this unhurriedness is punctuated with moments of intense violence. Because of this, the strongest element of this film is its tension. It's worth mentioning, though, that while it is a violent horror flick, it employs violence in the classical sense; that is, you don't see much of it. However, even if you can't see it, you can hear it, and you most certainly can imagine it, so there's a strong chance the hand will go up to cover the images on the screen.

While I liked the My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To, the biggest problem I had with it is that the whole thing doesn't feel very original. It reminded me too much of the Swedish film Let the Right One In, which had a Hollywood remake a few years later. There's also the 1997 novel Thirsty about a teenage vampire, as well as the film Only Lovers Left Alive about modern-day vampires contemplating their existence. But one interesting bit of novelty with the movie is its decision to focus on poor and working-poor characters (protagonists and victims). Typically, the horror movies that come to mind center on middle-class folks and above (think the suburban teenagers in Halloween and Scream or the rich families in The Exorcist and Hereditary), but this film's setting and characters almost make it feel like it's hinting at being allegorical. 

At any rate, Fugit, Schram, and Campbell all do a fantastic job in these sympathetic portrayals of three family members trying to survive, especially Thomas, who just wants to be a normal boy. In fact, I thought it probably would have been more interesting if the filmmakers had cast a younger actor in the role (perhaps someone around Jacob Tremblay's age or younger), which would have made his mannerisms and the way the three of them act around each other much more believable. Campbell was about twenty-four years old during film, and his age seems to make the situations awkward at times.   

If you can tolerate the deliberate pace of the film, My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To is a recommendable film. It's scary and unsettling, sure, but not gratuitously so. So if you prefer your horror films to have lots of gore, rest assured that there is plenty of blood in this movie. 

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Riders of Justice

"The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means."
-Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven 

"Denmark is a pretty good place to live but it is by no stretch of the imagination the utopia many in politics and the media in the U.S. claim to be." That's how British author and journalist Michael Booth put it in an interview with The Washington Post a few years ago to promote his book The Almost Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavia Utopia. The gist of the book, from what I could gather in the interview, is that yes, Denmark and other Scandinavian countries do well and offer a lot that other countries could learn from, but they're not perfect. There is petty theft, for example, and there also is violence.

In fact, nine thousand Danes filed a criminal complaint with the police last year. In a country of almost six million people, that comes out to about 0.0018 percent. But it still happens. We see it in the opening moments of Riders of Justice, the Danish film directed by Anders Thomas Jensen, when an uncle wants to buy a bike for his niece. The problem is that it's red, and she wants a blue one. Perhaps she will one day get it, her uncle assures her, and then the seller places a call for the order. The order, however, is not a legitimate one. Two common thieves break off the chains of a blue bicycle, and now they have it to sell to the uncle.

This action leads to a tragic chain of events. The blue bike belonged to a teenage girl named Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), and now she can't get to school. The family car won't start, so her mother (Anne Birgitte Lind) decides to take her via train. They're already having a bad day because on top of those two inconveniences, they've learned that Mathilde's father, Marcus (Mads Mikkelsen), will continue to be deployed in Afghanistan for another three months.

Also having a bad day are Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Lennart (Lars Brygmann), two probability scientists who are fired from their jobs when the algorithm they've come up with proves useless to the company they work for. Having packed up his things, Otto gets on the same train as Mathilde and her mother. Being the gentleman he is, he stands up and gives his seat to Mathilde's mother, but there's a terrible accident that kills eleven people, including the mother who sat down in his seat only a few moments earlier. Naturally, Mathilde is in a state of shock and falls into a depression, and Marcus returns home. Angry at what has happened, he doesn't know how to connect with his daughter and console her. He even punches her boyfriend (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt). 

Otto likely also goes through shock and grief (especially as he realizes that it should have been him to die), but his mind knows this could not have been a mere accident. One of the victims of the crash was an informant who was to testify in the trial against the violent leader of the notorious Riders of Justice gang, Kurt (Roland Møller). With the witness now dead, Kurt will likely be acquitted. But Otto and Lennart, once the police aren't interested in helping, take a chance and confront Marcus with their slightly far-fetched theory. So consumed with anger, Marcus makes a likely candidate to join them in their ragtag quest for justice. Now, instead of just petty theft, there will be blood, and lots of it.

Riders of Justice, the fifth film Mikkelsen and Jensen have collaborated on, is a film that changes tones with remarkable ease while effortlessly blending a variety of genres—from action to drama to comedy—while keeping one's attention and investment throughout. There is emotional weight here, especially regarding the father-daughter dynamics, yet there are also lots of laughs, particularly from Brygmann and frequent-Jensen collaborator Nicolas Bro as Emmenthaler, the third part of the mad geniuses who work out together that something is amiss with the train crash and that something must be done. Yet the drama and comedy are really buoyed by the universal desire for revenge. Marcus has been pricked, he bleeds, and he desperately wants revenge.  

In addition to the perfect acting from the film's cast, much acclaim should be given to Jensen for his smart script. You may struggle to keep up with all the mathematical jargon, and it may be especially challenging if you're reading the subtitles, but it's worth the effort. Just about every other moment in this flick is unpredictable, making the whole thing seem like a smarter version of Taken. Indeed, it might be the smartest action movie you've seen in a while. 

While some of the gratuitous violence grows stale as the film reaches its denouement, most of the rest of the film is a blast, and a thought-provoking one at that. I kept thinking about consequentialism while watching it, the idea that a moral act is one that produces something good. The choices our protagonists make against the Riders of Justice may challenge this. Do the ends justify the means? What happens if mistakes are made? What happens if the ones you love get hurt along the way? These are all worthy questions, but even if they're not your cup of tea, there's still a lot of shoot-outs and laughter along the way to keep you entertained.   

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