For a film loaded with many laughs, it’s strange that Joshy begins on quite the morbid note. Joshy (Silicon Valley’s Thomas Middleditch) arrives home one day to find his fiancé (Alison Brie) lifeless on the floor, dead from an apparent suicide. But the film doesn’t dwell on her death for very long, instead jumping ahead four months when Joshy’s small crew of friends (Nick Kroll, Adam Pally, Alex Ross Perry, and Brett Gelman) elect to celebrate his bachelor party, just as they had intended before the incident occurred. When the boys arrive at their secluded cabin for the party, they discover Joshy saying goodbye to a girl he picked up from the local bar—a rather uncharacteristic move and one that isn’t ever addressed again. Other than this small inexplicable moment, the rest of the film plays out as a hysterical weekend bender of heavy drinking, drug consumption, and partying with hookers. In theory it’s a classic recipe for a “what could possibly go wrong?” scenario, but, oddly enough, the answer in Joshy is nothing.

Credit the amazing cast for making Joshy work as well as it does. Without them, it’s just another hangout movie with a paper-thin plot and very little character development. Granted, simply putting these hilarious actors together in a room would make for entertainment. Each character’s personality puzzle-pieces into the group as a whole. Kroll is the partier. Pally is the sensitive married guy. Perry is the geek. Gelman is the wildcard. And then there’s Middleditch, who’s stuck playing the uninteresting title character—ironically, the least developed of the bunch. There’s also a random appearance by Joe Swanberg (and his real family), who seem only to show up to get a few laughs.

Luckily, there’s enough humor found in sophomore director Jeff Baena’s (Life After Beth) film that it’s easy to forgive some of the off moments. The highlight of Joshy is watching Perry finally getting his wish to play a complicated board game with the group. That’s right, this ensemble even finds a way to make the struggle to play a board game amusing to watch.

Rating:
7/10

Recently, the staff here at Way Too Indie put together a list of independent films we thought Alfred Hitchcock might have made if The Master of Suspense had come up in the Kickstarter Era. There were some great choices, including Mulholland Dr. and Stoker, while my pick was The Usual Suspects. It’s too bad that assignment came before I had the chance to screen Queen of Earth. The psychological drama not only invokes Hitch, it screams Hitch.

Catherine (Elisabeth Moss) is a young woman on the ropes, having recently lost her father and been dumped by her boyfriend. Reeling from these impactful events, she looks to get away from it all by spending a week with Ginny (Katherine Waterston), an old and dear friend whose parents have a gorgeous and secluded lakeside vacation home. The retreat, however, proves less than helpful. Memories of happier times at the vacation home—times when Catherine’s (now-ex) boyfriend James (Kentucker Audley) was also a guest—surface to wrack Catherine’s conscience. Agitating things further are Ginny’s passive/aggressive behavior towards Catherine and the perpetual presence of Ginny’s neighbor/plaything Rich (Patrick Fugit), who takes a peculiar antagonistic approach when dealing with Catherine. Difficult memories and constant defensiveness take a grinding toll on Catherine’s already frail psyche, driving her deeper into despair and paranoia.

Queen of Earth is far more than just an exercise in observing one woman’s psyche slowly unravel, although it’s certainly that. The film opens at Catherine’s emotional Ground Zero; dismissed by a cheating boyfriend while reeling from the loss of her father. Writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s extreme close-ups on Moss are startling, revealing bloodshot eyes and a reddened nose and makeup ruined beyond repair, all from a recent (and clearly heavy) crying jag.

From here, Perry avoids the worn path of a woman making bad decisions while in an emotional fog. He also avoids presenting a woman who attempts to find herself after a lifetime of being defined by men. Instead, the filmmaker skillfully presents Catherine’s gradual decline within the framework of a larger, but quite intricate, story about friendship and the wages of the sin of pride. The relationship between Catherine and Ginny is strong and certainly has positive roots, but there is something more going on between them.

In addition to a terrific story, the film has many technical strengths, beginning with pop-up flashbacks that vanish almost as quickly as they appear. These brief scenes are critical to establishing the story’s foundation, even as it builds upon itself. It isn’t necessarily parallel storytelling, more a form of context to the present-day action. With masterful editing by Robert Greene and Peter Levinto, these flashbacks take the story between present day and about a year prior. It’s an unsettling technique, but it’s through these glimpses into the past—moments seen through both Catherine and Ginny’s eyes—that we’re allowed a comparison and contrast of how the two friends have changed in a year, and how their core attitudes have not.

Gloriously filmed in 16mm by cinematographer Sean Price Williams and set to a bare, haunting score by Keegan DeWitt, Queen of Earth channels the psychological dramas of the ’60s and ’70s, right down to spot-on title cards in soft pink cursive that mark each day that passes in the week-long story.

The presentation and aesthetics of the film fire on all cylinders, and at the heart of the film is a pair of performances simultaneously different yet complementary. Both are so very good.

As Catherine, Moss is turned loose, her confidence as an actress affording her the luxury of fearlessness. She manages the varying aspects of Catherine expertly, playing a woman freshly scorned and wearing every emotion on her tear-drenched sleeve; playing coy but paranoid conducting mysterious phone calls at random times during the day; and at other times a socially awkward introvert disarmed by an unexpected party. Moss delivers in amazing ways. Conversely, Waterston, as Ginny, is incredibly restrained. Her calm hostess to Moss’s unhinged basket case is at all times cool, almost aloof, with something of a sinister passive/aggressive treatment of Catherine that is captivating.

The tale ends with a devilish ending. To say more would be criminal, but I will add that a second watch of the film—with a full understanding of the ending—is highly recommended, providing a chance to catch the little clues that may be missed during a first watch.

What makes Queen of Earth so Hitchcockian isn’t Catherine’s plummet into madness, but rather how her spiral starts and how it accelerates. Setting it within the company of friends and against a placid backdrop reminds me of something Hitch would do as well, as comfortable surroundings only make the discomfort of psychological drama that much more uncomfortable. As for the roots of Catherine’s madness, I won’t say they are MacGuffins, but the loss of her father and end of a romance are clearly little more than starting points for something much more subtle and far more interesting.

For fans of independent films, now might be the time to feel vindicated. The transition from the realm of indie to the studio system isn’t a new concept by any means, but in the last several years cutting one’s teeth on the festival circuit has become very lucrative for some directors. Gareth Edwards went from making the low-budget Monsters in 2010 to helming the Godzilla reboot 4 years later (and in doing so went from a 6-figure budget to a 9-figure one); Marc Webb leapt from the twee (500) Days of Summer to taking over Sony’s Spider-Man reboot The Amazing Spider-Man; James Gunn went from R-rated genre fare to handling Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy; Rian Johnson, who already made a big leap from Brick to Looper, launched into the stratosphere when he was picked to direct the 8^th episode of Star Wars; and most recently, Safety Not Guaranteed’s Colin Trevorrow followed up his début with none other than Jurassic World. The glamour of Hollywood is merging with the not so glamorous world of DIY filmmaking, and it’s clearly working out for both the directors and the studios.

It’s natural to wonder how the influx of relatively new directors from festivals like Sundance or SXSW might change the blandness of Hollywood tentpoles, but it might be better to start asking about the other side of this equation. What does this mean for independent films, and will it change the way we perceive indies? Independent films don’t have an industry as vast or profitable as the studios, which means that the indie “system” is much more malleable and, therefore, easier to change.

And it’s evident that, despite the financial success of films like Jurassic World and Godzilla, artistic success is hard to find in this new trend. The boundaries between mainstream and independent have been slowly merging together, but the entire idea of indie has been about separating from the mainstream, and providing an alternative to films designed by committee. What’s happening now is a slow, disparaging shift in what indie means, and an increase in power and control for Hollywood. Indie directors aren’t infiltrating the system; they’re being devoured by it.

Jurassic World and Godzilla

That hasn’t always been the case. The early ’90s saw the success stories of Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith. For those three filmmakers, their situation was the ideal. Rather than adapt themselves to the status quo, they were able to apply their distinct styles on a bigger scale. But the film industry is a different beast today. Tarantino, Rodriguez and Smith directed their own original stories and didn’t work with a massive budget. Today, directors are getting scooped up to take over other people’s properties, and the budgets go well past 100 million. It’s nice to think that a certain filmmaker’s unique or irreverent style might successfully port over to the sequel/prequel/reboot/adaptation/etc. blockbuster, but it’s not likely. Investors would be insane to hand over that amount of cash to someone who’s only worked with a small fraction of that money.

All someone has to do is watch what’s been released so far to see how much these director’s distinct qualities from their earlier work(s) have been drowned out by the wants and needs of those truly running the show. Watch Godzilla, or James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and it’s like playing a game of “Where’s Waldo?” with directorial trademarks. Gunn may have been able to cast Michael Rooker in a supporting role—a part that could have gone to anyone and no one would have blinked—but Guardians follows a very clear, familiar and formulaic path, one that also helped Marvel continue building the overall story for their massively successful franchise. It didn’t come as a huge surprise when rumours started that Edgar Wright, one of the best genre filmmakers working today, bailed on Ant-Man because Marvel wanted a Marvel movie, not an Edgar Wright movie.

So this brings me back to the first question I asked: What does this mean for independent films? What this new trend has done is turn film festivals like Sundance and SXSW—places designed to celebrate and promote distinct, independent voices—into training grounds for the next studio workman (with extra emphasis on man, as Jessica Ritchey points out). Now, indie features act as showreels or auditions, with people speculating over which directors will get hurled into the maw of the next big-budget property. And by putting the emphasis on this, it pushes the truly independent American filmmakers working today—the Andrew Bujalskis, the Josephine Deckers, the Rick Alversons, the Alex Ross Perrys, the Sean Bakers, the Nathan Silvers, and the Matthew Porterfields, to name a few—even further into the fringe. People look at the trajectories of people like Trevorrow, Edwards, Johnson, Webb, Gunn and others as a sign of indie taking over the mainstream, but it’s more like the mainstream assimilating the indie universe. The pockets of Hollywood studios may be getting bigger, but the opportunity for discovering and supporting groundbreaking new talents appears to be getting smaller with every year.

Listen Up Philip, an unpleasant film I enjoyed almost masochistically, is most interesting when viewed as a cinematic vote of confidence from its writer/director, Alex Ross Perry, to his lead actor, the incomparable Jason Schwartzman. The indie filmmaker casts Schwartzman as one of the most irritating archetypes that exists in modern America: the narcissistic, cynical, East Coast intellectual who loves wearing tight-fitting plaid button-ups and sweaters and treats everyone around him like garbage. (I could have distilled that description down to that more familiar H-word, but pointed self-loathing, especially after this movie, is too irresistible to pass up–I’m admittedly a sucker for tight-fitting plaid button-ups and sweaters.) The point is, Schwartzman is tasked with carrying the film as author Philip Lewis Friedman, a character so objectionable and infuriating that the risk of audience walk-outs is very, very real. But Perry had faith in him, a faith that was rewarded–somehow, some way, they’ve fashioned the misadventures of an insufferable misanthrope into one of the most idiosyncratic, intriguing films of the year.

The film operates in a mode unmistakable to Woody Allen and Noah Baumbach devotees: Through a skittish handheld camera we see Philip angrily marching into an NYC sandwich shop to meet with an ex-girlfriend he hasn’t seen in a while. She’s late, which angers him thoroughly (a tendency of his we learn by way of narration by Eric Bogosian, who guides us through the film by revealing the characters’ inner thoughts and referring to past and future events). He was planning on giving her an advance copy of his second book, but her transgression causes him to rescind the gift, tear her apart with laser-precise verbiage, and storm off in a fit.

We’d feel sorrier for the poor girl if she didn’t look so accustomed to Philip’s toxic behavior, but as the story unfolds we bear witness to Philip’s decimation of several more relationships, the victims of which don’t get off so easily. His supportive, sweet girlfriend, Ashley (Elizabeth Moss, aptly cast), has informs him that one of his idols, Ike Zimmerman (a terrific Jonathan Pryce), a similarly arrogant but far more accomplished author of several classics (the hilarious, retro book covers and titles are wonderful), has invited Philip to stay at his country home, away from the distracting hustle of the city. He obliges without hesitation, abandoning Ashley, to her despair. He leaves her with a sweet farewell: “I hope this’ll be good for us…but especially for me.”

Philip is the ultimate version of the despicable 21st Century know-it-all, taking devilish pleasure in tearing people down with his intellect. He meets with an old college buddy specifically to tear him down, piece by piece, over a drink. When his publishers insist that he do publicity for his book, he refuses to do any interviews or appearances, a pretentious move even a more respected writer, like Zimmerman, would be an asshole to pull.

Unlike characters Schwartzman’s played in the past who are similarly smarmy and arrogant, there’s nothing endearing or likable about Philip in the slightest. It’s a tough role to pull off, but Schwartzman approaches it with,ironically, no ego. He doesn’t want to be cute and he doesn’t want to be liked; it’d be unfair to call Philip an anti-hero, because he’s unquestionably villainous. He’s the kind of guy no one wants to be around, and yet Perry subjects us to his presence and asks us to indulge in his horrible behavior. That’s where Moss’ Ashley comes in handy. For a good chunk of the film, Philip leaves the picture and we come up for air as we follow Ashley’s road to recovery in the wake of Phillip’s exodus. She’s incredibly sympathetic and lovely, and her portion of the film is an absolutely essential respite from Philip’s downer-parade.

Zimmerman is the key to unlocking the true essence of the story. The ornery, aging author is a mirror image of Philip, like a ghost of from the future announcing the pathetic existence Philip’s doomed to inhabit once he’s lost his youth and friends. Zimmerman, like his protégé, has a kinder female counterpart, his emotionally estranged daughter, Melanie (Krysten Ritter). He neglects her and considers her nothing more than a nuisance, which breaks her heart on the daily. Ritter, like Moss, maximizes her onscreen minutes, expressing her resentment and love for her father through tearful eyes and a strong stance. We spend the whole movie watching Philip reject and ridicule the few good influences in his life (the girls) as he sinks into the same quicksand of despair his mentor has fallen into. We want him to listen up, but he’s too far gone.

Void of sentimentality, Listen Up Philip is one of those movies you have to be in the exact right mood for to derive any sort of enjoyment. If you’re feeling particularly spiteful or bitter, I could see the film being pretty cathartic, actually–the barbs and put-downs Schwartzman delivers are sharply written and very funny, and while sometimes Philip’s pure evilness will make you grimace, most of the time it’ll make you laugh with recognition, albeit reluctantly. Three films deep, Perry’s career looks to be looking bright as he hones his craft and comes into his own. While his stylistic inspirations are completely transparent (Wes Anderson with the bohemian milieu and book covers, Woody Allen with the jazz horn soundtrack and 16mm grit), he pays tribute to his predecessors in the best way possible, by taking their tools and building something new with them.

Listen Up Philip trailer

In Alex Ross Perry’s follow up to The Color Wheel, the writer/director introduces us to author Philip Lewis Friedman as he angrily awaits the release of his 2nd book. Only steps behind Perry’s chaotic handheld camera movements, Jason Schwartzman as Philip stomps down New York City sidewalks, first meeting an ex-girlfriend to rub his newfound success in her face, then storming into his publisher’s office to declare he no longer intends to do any media promotion for the book. The repercussions are minimal for this malignant narcissist, the subject of the upcoming comedy Listen Up Philip; however, over time the film shows how Philip’s egotism causes his relationships to sour.

Accusations and quick-witted comebacks are dolled out swiftly in refreshingly intelligent repartee. The wit in Perry’s script allows for some revealing conversations to take place between close family and lovers. His commentary on how selfishness fares in relationships is made more intriguing by a collection of humorous performances. Supporting players Elisabeth Moss, Jonathan Pryce, Joséphine de La Baume and Krysten Ritter are able to take characters are loosely characterized and make them feel specific. The shining performance comes from Schwartzman, whose most searing lines are delivered with an unsettling but hilarious casualness.

Listen Up Philip meanders a bit for the middle section of the film, but it’s largely hysterical and insightful. It plays the New York Film Festival this week before a limited release on October 17th.

Writer/Director Alex Ross Perry‘s follow-up to his micro-budget feature The Color Wheel, Listen Up Philip now has released a new trailer ahead of its upcoming appearances on the fall film festival circuit. Strong reviews of the film and Perry’s previous work helped make Listen Up Philip one of Way Too Indie’s choices for our Essential Fall Films list. Starring Jason Schwartzman as the titular Philip, the movie tracks the narcissistic author as he awaits the publication of his second novel.

The trailer features little of the Rushmore star, instead focusing on the people in Philip’s life and their predominantly antagonistic words for him. Elisabeth Moss co-stars as Philip’s photographer girlfriend Ashley, stating in the teaser, “honestly sometimes you’re impossible to live with.” The cast also includes Krysten Ritter, Jess Weixler, Joséphine de La Baume and Jonathan Pryce.

After premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Listen Up Philip makes its Brazilian, Canadian, and British debuts at the Rio de Janiero International Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival, and London Film Festival, respectively. It will also play the New York Film Festival before its upcoming limited release, scheduled for October 17th. The movie will also be available through iTunes on October 21st.

First trailer for Listen Up Philip

JR (Carlen Altman) just broke up with her boyfriend, a former college professor of hers before she dropped out of school. With no one to turn to, she calls up her brother Colin (Alex Ross Perry) to help move her things out of the professor’s home. JR, an aspiring news broadcaster, repeatedly manipulates the truth to make her dead-end career choice seem prosperous to others. Colin, still living at home with a girlfriend he hates and having no real direction in his life, is needlessly bitter in social situations. JR picks her brother up and in no time the two of them are off.

Alex Ross Perry, the director/co-writer/star/producer of The Color Wheel (just to name a few of his duties here), is working in more familiar genre territory compared to his singularly weird debut Impolex. The story of two siblings who don’t get along road-tripping sounds like the sort of indie fare Sundance or SXSW would gleefully accept. What makes The Color Wheel stand out from other road-trip films, and also part of its brilliance, is how Perry completely demolishes all genre expectations to the point of repelling potential viewers.

The first third of the film spends almost all of its time with JR and Colin. The only other character with any lines is the owner of a Christian motel who refuses to let the two of them share the same room unless they’re married. The way that this broadly comic situation is filtered through Perry’s direction and writing (which he co-wrote with Altman) immediately sets the off-kilter tone that runs through the rest of the movie. Watching JR and Colin interact with each other ranges from annoying to downright hilarious, with so many snipes and insults tossed back and forth it’s impossible to catch all of them at once.

Once JR and Colin do start interacting with other people, things take a surprising turn. Everyone they encounter treats the both of them like garbage, starting with JR’s professor/ex-boyfriend (Bob Byington) who ruthlessly insults her as she flails around trying to defend herself. Suddenly JR starts to turn into a more sympathetic character, and The Color Wheel starts to feel like everything is filtered through Colin and JR’s skewed perspective. Neither of them get along with each other over the bulk of the film, but they both share similar situations and anxieties.

All of this culminates into a long sequence where the two go to a party held by old high school acquaintances. The party doesn’t feel natural in the slightest, playing out like the absolute worst case scenario one would associate with going to visit high school friends. Everyone at the party is successful with a career, and at one point they directly confront JR on what she’s doing with her life. By the time they leave the party JR and Colin’s loneliness is more apparent than ever. The penultimate scene in the film, a 9 minute shot that packs one hell of a punch, makes perfect sense once the initial shock wears off.

Alex Ross Perry has defined himself as one of the more exciting new directors with The Color Wheel, a movie bursting with ideas that also serves as a necessary shot in the arm for American independent cinema. The content, along with Perry’s comedic style, would make for a great double feature with The Comedy, but only the stronger types could be able to make it through both films.