Considering how perceptibly poignant his first two features are, it was hard to picture a John Michael McDonagh movie quite like the unapologetic and misanthropic War On Everyone. But hey, you know what they say: everything is bigger in America. With War, McDonagh turns away from the finesse we witnessed in The Guard and Cavalry, perhaps as a way to satirize the version of the US everyone else sees. It’s tonally erratic, loud, and rude, and a hundred times funnier than his previous works. Unhinged, like a rabid dog running around that you still have the urge to pet, this anti-hero buddy cop movie has cult status written all over it, giving us a good hard look at the funny side of Alexander Skarsgard and reminding us that Michael Pena is a comedic national treasure.

Terry (Skarsgard) and Bob (Pena) are close friends and partners on the force, a job they use as a springboard and get-out-of-jail free card to do shady, corrupt business. Never starting their sentences with “You have the right to remain silent,” Terry and Bob abuse lowlifes to score drugs and money while trying to keep their private lives in some kind of order (but not really giving a shit about it). Bob is married to Delores (Stephanie Sigman), with whom he has two overweight sons; Terry is the loner alcoholic with the vibe of private eye in the 1940s from a parallel universe with a country twist, one that plays Glenn Campbell 24/7 on the jukebox. When a major deal goes bad, a British criminal (Theo James) gets on Terry and Bob’s radar, and the shitstorm starts brewing.

If you start looking at War On Everyone as anything other than a hilarious journey with entertainment as the only destination, you’ll be left with a pretty shallow outer shell. It’s all about setting up scenes, throwing punchlines, working off of McDonagh’s zing-tastic screenplay, and the unlikely dynamic that builds between Skarsgard and Pena (oh, and Caleb Landry Jones looking he stepped out of a post-modern stage play of A Clockwork Orange is not to be missed). Underneath the garish surface, there’s philosophy a-brewing; but too many swerves to random dead-end scenes stopped me from wanting to explore further. Luckily, it keeps getting back on the main road with a mean streak of anti-PC humor that’s ballsy, vibrant and refreshing.

Rating:
7/10

While zombie movies can be traced back to the 1930s, the modern zombie film era is generally accepted to have begun with George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). Since then, the zombie movie has been a staple at the cinema and at home, with offerings ranging from the totally ’80s classic Night of the Comet to the biggest box office zombie flick yet, World War Z. Because there are only so many ways to serve up brains, and with TV’s The Walking Dead doing an excellent job of that on a regular basis, filmmakers are taking unique approaches to zombies and treating them as characters, not just mindless threats. Now we have tales of zombie romance such as the latest zombie movie to hit theaters, Life After Beth.

Zach Orfman (Dane DeHaan) is a devastated teen. His girlfriend, Beth Slocum (Aubrey Plaza), has died, and not long after the couple’s last discussion revolved around ending their relationship. In the days after her funeral, the young man clings to Beth’s memory and spends as much time with her parents as he can. He grows suspicious, however, when the Slocums (John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon) stop returning his calls. A visit to their house – where they pretend not to be home – reveals the truth behind their sudden secrecy: Beth is alive.

Well, sort of.

Beth is a zombie, only she doesn’t realize it. (Her parents see her as being resurrected.) As she and Zach rekindle their romance, Beth slowly deteriorates in both body and mind.

Life After Beth’s premise tantalizes before the film even fades in. Despite what feels like market saturation, zombies are still all the rage. The film’s plot (my dead girlfriend doesn’t know she’s dead) is a clever one. The leads are talented, good-looking, and popular. The supporting cast is terrific (including Paul Reiser and Cheryl Hines as Zach’s parents), with decades of cumulative comedic acting experience among them. This is a film that is aching to succeed.

Unfortunately the film’s concept works better on paper than it does as a movie. Life After Beth‘s fatal flaw is that there is little to the story beyond the clever premise.

Writer/director Jeff Baena spends the first act of the film slogging through a set-up that includes creating a contrived conflict between Zach and Beth’s parents. Time is also wasted establishing Zach’s own parents, with their yelling and their disbelief and their short attention spans, as adults from a bad sitcom. Never does Baena show Beth’s death, her “resurrection,” or her triumphant return home. It’s mentioned, not shown.

The middle of the film is nothing more than a series of sketches, each as unfunny as the one before it, and only made different by Beth’s continued deteriorating physical and mental condition. There is, also, the introduction of a girl from Zach’s childhood, Erica Wexler (Anna Kendrick), inserted (I guess) to offer a future for Zach once Beth goes Full Zombie. It’s an inserted idea yet not well-developed; another great talent wasted.

The third act is perhaps the most baffling aspect of the entire film. I don’t want to spoil anything by revealing details, however the path the story takes seems to occur out of the blue as a device used to help bear the weight of the film’s non-full length structure and is highly frustrating. This third act surprise could have been nicely developed early, and then followed throughout the film as a meaty subplot.  Instead, it’s triggered as an escape hatch to bring the film to a preposterous conclusion.

It’s hard to fault anyone in the cast for their work, because no one is given much to work with in the first place. As noted, Reiser and Hines have a sitcom sensibility to them, as does Shannon. Reilly is only slightly elevated because he’s given more relevant dialogue than the rest of the grown-ups. Plaza does fine descending from hapless to mindless. Honestly, there isn’t an MVP performance in the bunch.

Everyone should walk away from this unscathed, but it will be curious to see how DeHaan’s career is affected. In Life After Beth, he’s pale and he broods and stumbles about in a disbelieving haze, none of which is memorable. However, this is his second subpar outing in 2014 (following the terrible The Amazing Spider-Man 2), so 2015 might be pivotal for the young actor. He has a period piece (Tulip Fever) coming out, but more importantly, he is playing James Dean in Anton Corbijn’s Life, a role that might be make-or-break for him.

The zombie genre will (un)live on beyond Life After Beth, a film that feels like a Halloween entry of a Saturday Night Live routine that may have been funny in a short sketch, but can’t survive being stretched out over 90 minutes.

Life After Beth trailer

Like the two previous Sundance hits, Whiplash goes through familiar emotional motions which prevent it from being the kind of sensation the Sundance buzz might make you think it is. But, there are two important ways it distances itself from Beasts Of The Southern Wild and Fruitvale Station. Firstly, it’s stylized enough to not have an air of forced importance in each shaky frame or gritty filter. Secondly, it’s very funny and comedy goes a long way. There was some commotion in Sundance when Buzzfeed’s Amanda Willmore stirred the gender pot and called the film out on its representation of women, and I can’t deny the truth in that. This is a boy’s film through and through, where mothers desert their children, girlfriends have no ambition, and girls have no place in famed musical courses. Leaving that major setback aside, for now, the film still uses a musical passion rarely given attention to and makes a highly enjoyable and invigorating film built around determination and pushed limits.

Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller) wants to be remembered as one of the greatest drummers to have lived and the film wastes no time in throwing you right into the thick of it. He is practicing a special double-tap technique with drums when one of Shaffer Conservatory of Music’s most feared and respected instructors, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), walks in to listen, observe, and see if Neyman would fit in his band. It’s quickly established that Fletcher’s version of listening and observing is criticizing and deriding thanks to an exceedingly high standard. However, Neyman’s determination and skill impresses Fletcher enough to give the 19-year old a shot, in preparation for an upcoming competition. Andrew’s strained relationship with his father (Paul Reiser), his efforts to have a relationship with Nicole (Melissa Benoist), and the dismissive way we find out that his mother deserted the family, are contextualized around his passion for being a drummer. Whiplash is about the lines dividing passion and obsession, the willingness of the spirit to never give up, and a highly flawed teaching principle.

There’s much to admire in Whiplash, and if audience reaction is used as measurement of a film’s success you’d think Whiplash was the greatest film out of Cannes, not just the Director’s Fortnight where the year’s Sundance hit usually lands. You’d have to be made of stone to not be swept up by the film’s  crescendo, an ending designed to put audiences into a frenzy. It’s only when hindsight kicks in that you realize some of the film’s messages get lost in the pandemonium of emotion. Fletcher is the vulgar, drill-seargent, hard-ass you love to hate, whose character shades do little to cover up deeply flawed principles, and yet, once you think the film acknowledges them it turns around and drops them like a bad habit. Luckily, we have character actor J.K. Simmons (channeling cinema’s toughest drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket) in a role that was made for his sharp wit (all he’s gotta do is close a door to make you laugh) and knack of going from intense to kind with a seamless flick of the switch. This is the closest he’ll ever get to Best Support Actor award consideration. But if you consider him, then Teller should get mention as well. He’s at his best when he’s behind the drum set and playing as if possessed by the ghost of Buddy Rich. Compared to his turn in the great The Spectacular Now, this performance shows that he’s growing and if he continues like this he’s going to be major.

The most admirable thing to take away from Whiplash is the balance of comedy and drama, and supported by two strong performances and award worthy editing from Tom Cross, is the young director at the helm; Damien Chazelle. He should be flooded with offers right about now, so don’t be surprised to hear how he’s going to be directing some kind of Spider-Man VS Godzilla spin-off, because at 28 years of age, Chazelle is by far the biggest star of the film. With an original screenplay brimming with quotable lines and memorable scenes (the “out of tune” episode is one of many uproarious highlights) and assured direction of a young man’s dissent into a dangerously taxing obsession, while effectively portraying the effects of psychological harassment, Chazelle will be one of the year’s biggest talking points (not unsimilar to Benh Zeitlin, but in my opinion, more deserved). However, we come back to the film’s flaws which the age, experience, and gender of the director make all the more understandable. Whiplash is immensely enjoyable to watch and listen to (the music is fantastic, as it must be) but the predictable emotional pushes and pulls, and the rather immature and dismissive representation of women in the film highlight the director’s inexperience. Nonetheless, he’s absolutely one to watch and for fans of J.K. Simmons, you’ve got your favorite movie in Whiplash.