This week’s show is brimming with special guests as Bernard welcomes Lily Tomlin and Paul Weitz to talk about their outstanding new film, Grandma. Plus, filmmaker Hubert Sauper joins the show to discuss his documentary We Come As Friends, an outsider’s look at the violent conflict in the Sudan. Ananda jumps in to help review ‘Grandma,’ and on top of all that, Bernard rants about crappy video game movies and shares his Indie Pick of the Week. Whew! Click that play button and listen away!

Topics

• Indie Pick of the Week (0:55)
• ‘We Come As Friends’ Interview (10:17)
• ‘Grandma’ Review (43:25)
• Lily Tomlin and Paul Weitz (1:05:14)

WTI Articles Referenced in the Podcast

7 Chinese Brothers Review
We Come As Friends Review
Grandma Review

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Jason Schwartzman has perfected the alchemy of the self-centered but likable asshole, a petty narcissist out looking for love and acceptance in all the wrong places who, despite his hardened outer shell, really does have his heart in the right place. We’ve seen it before, born and arguably perfected during his work with his pal Wes Anderson, the character might have reached its peak in last year’s acerbic Listen Up, Philip. And the truth is, there are few other actors working today who could have made Listen Up, Philip watchable, let alone made audiences root for such a vain prick. But Schwartzman did all that and more. And now, with Bob Byington’s (Somebody Up There Likes Me) 7 Chinese Brothers, Schwartzman is working his magic again, while managing to salvage some of the film around him.

The beats of 7 Chinese Brothers are rather simple. Schwartzman plays Larry, a hard-drinking, hardly working schlub, who spends his days motor mouthing through one-sided conversations with his so-ugly-he’s-cute bulldog, Arrow. Larry’s life is going nowhere, and he seems happy with that. But things take a turn when he’s fired from his serving job for stealing booze and drinking on the job. Judging from Larry’s response, it’s easy to see he’s been here before. In fact, not much in his life changes at first. That same night Larry hits the clubs with his buddy Major Norwood (Tunde Adebimpe of TV On The Radio), pops some pills, and wakes up on his couch the next day. The one thing Larry does right in his life is visit his foul-mouthed grandma (Olympia Dukakis) in her assisted living home. Even as she continues to rebuff his pleas for money, he keeps visiting.

It seems only by chance that Larry winds up working at Quick Lube, vacuuming cars and stealing change. Soon, though, Larry realizes that he likes both this new job and his new boss (Eleanore Pienta) — a feeling that’s complicated by Norwood’s mysterious skills with women.

What’s clear from start to finish is that Larry doesn’t have much of a filter. Time and again he speaks out of line, uttering every humorous and asinine thing that pops into his head. Not only that, but he doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks either. It’s this unfiltered Schwartzman that keeps 7 Chinese Brothers up and running for as long as it does (and the film is brisk, clocking in at 76 minutes).

The narrative, on paper, makes sense and offers Larry some room to grow, but the film seems uninterested in any sort of progression, meandering often. Granted there are films and filmmakers who make this work, building their films to embody the marooned and stagnant characters they have set out to study. But here the story beats that Byington does choose to hit and follow, often do little to help us understand Larry or help him understand himself (with one particular subplot about his boss’ ex-husband and his petty theft being the worst of all).

Films like 7 Chinese Brothers are inherently challenging to make. Most movies are built upon one of two things: the movement of plot or the growth of character. Which is not to say that films about directionless people aren’t valuable or enjoyable (many of Schwartzman’s characters are in fact rather directionless or otherwise inhibited). But rather that the challenge is particularly great to find a way to invest an audience in someone going nowhere and wanting nothing (Larry claims to want a lot but does very little to get any of it). And, arguably, the only reason we invest in Larry at all is Arrow, Schwartzman’s real-life pet and reaction shot master. Not only does Arrow feel like the emotional core of the film, but he also steals damn near every scene he’s in.

On the technical end, the score by Vampire Weekend’s Chris Baio is energetic and subdued all at once, bringing a nice forward push that might have otherwise been absent from the proceedings. At times, though, the music seems to take on a life of it’s own, diverging from the scene to become an independent and less resonant song.

Finally, while the film is clearly flawed, the most obvious misstep seems to have been born in the editing room. Pieced together by Robert Greene and Leah Marino, 7 Chinese Brothers doesn’t ever feel clunky or haphazard, but it does feel lost rather often, like chunks of time have been excised or forgotten. While not quite fatal, it is hard not to feel muddled or confounded when you can’t even figure out where the scene is taking place or what sort of odd architecture a building has.

For all the mess that is the film’s final third, 7 Chinese Brothers remains a light-on-its-feet comedy shouldered along by a solid performance from Schwartzman, by turns hilarious, caustic, and ultimately mournful. And while many might find themselves wondering what the point is, it’s hard to flaw a film that, unlike so many, refuses to judge its characters, and refuses to tell them how they ought to be living.

Jason Schwartzman has always been a bit manic onscreen, his characters often charmingly smarmy. He’s quite possibly the perfect example of “flawed but likable”—which, by the way, is a deep compliment. So, while last year’s Listen Up Philip mixed up the formula a bit, Schwartzman seems to be back in his comfort zone with the first trailer for 7 Chinese Brothers.

The flick follows Larry (Schwartzman) as he’s booted from one job and forced to hunt down another—a large feat for the oft-inebriated slacker. Soon, though, Larry gets a bite at a tire and lube shop and meets Lupe, who just might help him get his life in order.

Written and directed by Bob Byington (Somebody Up There Likes Me), the cast is rounded out by Stephen Root, Olympia Dukakis, and TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe. The film premiered at SXSW earlier this year to some positive nods, and the trailer promises laughs. But honestly, we’d line up for Schwartzman alone.

7 Chinese Brothers opens August 28th. Check out the first trailer below.

Love & Mercy

Brian Wilson wrote some of the most beautifully complex pieces of music in history throughout his decades-long career with the Beach Boys and beyond. But as a person, he’s more beautifully complex than anything anyone could ever write. Bill Pohlad’s Love & Mercy explores Wilson’s psyche from two angles, focusing on the biggest artistic and personal turning points in his life. Paul Dano plays a Wilson as a young man in the Beach Boys’ heyday, in the midst of writing what would become one of the greatest albums of all time, Pet Sounds. Making up the other half of the movie is a more recent, frightening period in Wilson’s life (he’s played here by John Cusack), when he was under the (highly medicated) spell of unethical therapist Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), his only protection from whom being his beach blonde soul mate, Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks).

Alternating between the two Brians is a welcome break from the typical biopic schematic. Dano’s resemblance is scary uncanny, and while Cusack’s isn’t so spot-on (I didn’t see it, to be honest), their commitment as actors is about level. Beach Boys fans will suffer uncontrollable geek-outs during the Pet Sounds studio session reenactments, but the real value of the film lies in the respectfully unkempt and fraught depiction of Wilson’s legacy as both a musician and a man.

Experimenter

Slipping between several planes of reality with the nimbleness of a jazz ensemble, Michael Almereyda‘s Experimenter, starring Peter Sarsgaard as late social psychologist Stanley Milgram, is more of a delectable treat than the dark subject matter might lead you to believe. It centers on Milgram’s famed contributions to the world of social experimentation, most notably his controversial experiment on obedience conducted in the ’60s. We see the Holocaust-inspired experiment—involving test subjects led to believe they’re remotely causing harm to a man in an adjacent room (played by Jim Gaffigan)—reenacted by a litany of strong players, including Anton Yelchin, John Leguizamo, Anthony Edwards, and others.

The film sees Sarsgaard’s Milgram periodically address us, the audience, in cleverly worded monologues that highlight the actor’s natural wit and intellect. It’s fun to see Sarsgaard given so much breathing room; he has a lot of fun with the role, and so we do as well. Almereyda lets loose too, with neat touches like utilizing rear-projection backdrops and employing a real-life elephant to stalk behind Sarsgaard down a hall as a fun metaphor. Winona Ryder stars as Milgram’s wife, Sasha, and gives the film an emotional oomph whose importance is clearest by film’s end.

7 Chinese Brothers

Jason Schwartzman is ridiculously funny in Bob Byington‘s 7 Chinese Brothers, a film created in the Wild West indie landscape that panders to no one (mainstream audiences will likely balk at the quaint, offbeat humor), but will please crackpot-comedy weirdos (like yours truly) to no end. Larry (Schwartzman) is a small-town schlub who drinks his way into and out of menial jobs he can’t stand. He’s got his romantically savvy friend, Major Norwood (TVOTR’s Tunde Adebimpe), his silvery grandmother (Olympia Dukakis), and his impossibly drowsy dog (Schwartzman’s real dog, Arrow) to keep him company most days. When he finds himself gravitated to his new boss, Lupe (Eleanore Pienta), he’s shocked to discover that, for once, he actually looks forward to going to work.

A lot of the funniest stuff in 7 Chinese Brothers involves Schwartzman almost having a contest with himself, trying to come up with the most bizarre behaviors he can think of and making them as out-there as possible. It’s the little, absurdist stuff that makes you laugh, like Schwartzman throwing garbage into a garbage can, and then throwing said garbage can into a dumpster. Byington’s written a great script, too, each line of dialogue going in a different direction than you expected. Keep this one in mind.