Lucas Heyne's MOPE takes you behind-the-scenes at a dismally low-end porn studio

Said to be based on a real-life incident (don't watch the trailer unless you want just about every piece of important information given away in advance), MOPE, the 2019 film that made its debut at last year's Sundance festival (do they accept every movie submitted these days?), directed and co-written by Lucas Heyne, enters a world of (and spends way too much time with) depraved and stupid people acting in depraved and stupid ways.

Other than that, however, the film is just about as entertaining and edifying as you might expect.

Mr. Heyne, pictured at left, has failed to find the right (or much of any) tone for his film, resulting in its appearing to go over the top in terms of character, plot and performance -- and then stay that way throughout. Which makes the whole thing a lot less enjoyable or endurable than we might prefer.

Even the refusal to show any full frontal (in a film about the porn industry yet!) seems a weak and unnecessary cop-out. We do get one disembodied shot of a cock via video screen; otherwise, the main tool of porn remains consistently and prudishly just out of range, even and especially when the characters disrobe.

Our two main characters, Tom (played by Kelly Sry, above, left) and Steve (played by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, above, right) initially seem like oddball slackers given to watching porn and imagining that they could become -- despite their much-commented-upon, small-sized sexual equipment -- major porn stars. What they are and will stay are mopes, which the movie defines at the outset as "bottom-tier porn performers who do the dirtiest, most depraved work in the business."

Indeed they do, but it is all neither as ugly (except for the initial scene in which a porn actress gets jizzed on by a large group of mostly unpleasant-looking men) nor as amusing as the filmmakers may have hoped. From time to time the movie's funny, in a black, bleak, sometimes ironic manner, but because that tone keeps fidgeting from one mood to another to another, as our would-be idiot heroes keep tripping over themselves in the dumbest ways possible, any sympathy built up quickly dissipates, while the comedy fizzles and/or the would-be drama goes sideways. Until, that is, the blood-letting begins. And that, one suspects, is the reason this movie got greenlit.

The film's biggest "star" is David Arquette (above), playing a successful porn director whom our boys con into imagining they have something to offer him, but once his couple of scenes are over, this character disappears. The real star here is an actor named Brian Huskey (below), whom I've seen multiple times during his long and fertile career, but until now, he has not had a role big enough to grab my attention. He certainly does here, playing the seedy, creepy lowest-of-the-low-end porn producer who is happy to use our two nitwits until one of them proves too much for even the likes of him. Mr. Huskey does wonders with the role.

As do the other actors on view. In fact, these good performances somewhat make up for the problematic concept, script and direction on view. As in porno in general, the women's roles are merely for show and for servicing the guys, though the actresses certainly do what they can with the material. The saddest role goes to Tonya Cornelisse as the late-in-the-game, addict girlfriend of Steve.

As the increasingly nutty Steve, Mr. Stewart-Jarrett is believable moment to moment, yet the script makes him so beyond-the-pale so soon and so often that it is difficult to believe anyone would put up with this guy for nearly as long as they do. It is, finally, Mr. Sry who brings what caring and heart that Mope can manage. He makes Tom the only remotely "good" guy on view: kindly, helpful, and even -- in the realm of technology, at least -- intelligent.

And then the dismal script has him, in an "inspirational" moment, telling Steve, "You can do this!" "This" turns out to be leading a gang-bang on Steve's own girlfriend. Well, it's all just ironic black comedy, right? Barely.

From Quiver Distribution, Mope opens via digital streaming everywhere across the USA this Friday, June 12.

USA Blu-ray debut for Alain Corneau's 1979 would-be cult film, SÉRIE NOIRE

Said to have been inspired by the Jim Thompson novel, A Hell of a Woman, the 1979 French film SÉRIE NOIRE was directed and co-adapted (with major help on the latter by Georges Perec) by the late Alain Corneau, a filmmaker whose work TrustMovies has usually very much enjoyed. While everything I've seen by this fellow would qualify as a good deal more than adequate, this film doesn't even come close to that.

Corneau, pictured right, evidently decided to filter Thompson's tale through the sensibility of dark comedy, if not outright farce, leading almost immediately and consistently thereafter to something very close to camp. Worse yet, unintentional camp.

The movie's star, the also late Patrick Dewaere (below), appears to have been given rein to go full-throttle. The result is rather like watching Nicolas Cage at his wildest and worst. In his too-short career, Dewaere was always threatening to go over the top. Here he does it in spades, giving the kind of what-the-fuck performance I should think might have caused the sctors working with him to run for the hills.

The story here involves a seedy salesman (Dewaere) who happens upon an elderly female client who has recently been cheated by another of the salesman's clients. She has a nubile, seemingly nympho neice (the also late Marie Trintignant, below, right) whom she rents out, and to whom our salesman takes an addled fancy. (Just about everything Dewaere does here is addled.)

Our salesman also has a nutty/slutty wife (Myriam Boyer) and a deadpan sleazebag boss (the-best-of-the-lot performance from Bernard Blier, below, right) and yet another client/friend (Andreas Katsulas) who is as crazy as everybody else. And that's a big part of the problem. Everyone is so busy being "out there" there very soon there's no "there" there, as Ms Stein, for other reasons, once surmised. I don't doubt that our world is full of reprobates and hypocrites, myself included, but Mr. Corneau's world here is more like an alternate universe with little of the fun or semi-logic that most of these provide.

You might indeed say that the filmmaker turns the conventions of noir on their head, subverting them into would-be comedy. Yet even by this standard, Serie Noire does not work, but instead takes its place as one of  the biggest major misfires in movie history: no suspense, no real laughs, no credibiity, no nuttin'. Oh, wait:  there is plenty of embarrassment.

"Name me one guy who's been as unlucky as me?" shouts our nitwit protagonist near the film's finale. After watching this far into things, the viewer may want to scream back at him, "Me!"  From Film Movement Classics, in French with English subtitles and running a lengthy 116 minutes, the movie hits the street -- in a fine Blu-ray transfer featuring some very interesting extras (yes, even if you disliked this work as much as I did) -- tomorrow, Tuesday, April 28 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Judy Greer's directorial debut, A HAPPENING OF MONUMENTAL PROPORTIONS, opens

I am hard pressed to think of another actor whose performances over 21 years -- 129 of them, according to the imdb, and generally in supporting roles most often of the comedic variety -- have garnered her such good will (at least among movie-goers like me) than Judy Greer.

From Jawbreakers and Three Kings through Cursed, The Descendents and the recent Measure of a Man plus countless TV shows, Ms Greer, shown below,  has proven consistently interesting, reliable, funny and smart. When TrustMovies learned of her directing debut via a film entitled A HAPPENING OF MONUMENTAL PROPORTIONS, he was both excited and expectant.

The stellar cast Greer is working with, too, could hardly be bettered and includes Common, Bradley Whitford, Allison Janney, Jennifer Garner, John Cho, Katie Holmes, Kumail Nanjiani and Keanu Reeves. (Mr. Reeves does not appear until movie's end, but his scene -- taking place mostly in a very colorful restaurant men's room, pictured at bottom -- proves bizarrely memorable.)

So: What's not to like? Let's start with the movie itself, which, although Ms Greer, who has directed well enough to pass muster and has most of her actors achieving as consistent a tone as possible, is working here with a screenplay written by Gary Lundy (below) that pretty much sinks the best intentions of the rest of the cast and crew.

What exactly was Mr. Lundy going for, I wonder? Some kind of satire of American society, hypocrisy, the current workplace and our school system, perhaps? If so, the result is slipshop and half-assed. The plot is undercooked, while certain characters -- the school administrator played by Rob Riggle, for instance -- are overdrawn and banged home with a vengeance.

To note but a single joke gone wrong: the suddenly deceased gardener with the name "Kevin," which of course in the Los Angels area where the movie takes place is so wrong, since all gardeners must be Hispanic. The idea may be funny but given the Lundy/Riggle combination, it is repeated so often, long and loudly that what would have been clever once or twice is instead done to death.

Greer and her very able cast try to put the spin of reality (occasionally hyper-reality) onto this mess, but the script and characterization keep upending them.

There are dead moms aplenty, the school's career day in which parents participate, a workplace coffee machine that gets sabotaged, adultery and its payoff, possible suicide, father-daughter/father-son tsuris and other assorted situations, none of which quite work for either comedy or pathos (and especially not for credibility) but instead begin to make us feel real sadness for the performers caught up all this, especially Common, who works particularly hard as a single dad trying to please his daughter while doing his job, as well as his assistant, played by Ms Garner. (The actor is shown above, left, with Mr. Whitford, who plays his nasty new boss, and below, right, with Storm Reid, who plays his sweet, intelligent daughter.)

Along the way there are some funny and/or enjoyable moments, as well as decent performances, too. But the tale told is too often too nonsensical to hold water yet not nearly clever enough for decent satire. Perhaps I am missing the point that screenwriter Lundy is trying to make -- is he just going for something goofy? -- or don't understand or appreciate the style he's using to accomplish it. But I'd have to call this one a misfire of monumental proportions.

From Great Point Media and running 82 minutes, A Happening of Monumental Proportions opens this Friday in a limited run of theaters across the country. In New York City, it will screen at the Cinema Village, and in the Los Angeles area at both the Laemmle Monica Film Center and the Ahrya Fine Arts. 

VOD/Digital/DVDebut: CRAZY FAMOUS, Farkas /Jarrett's nitwit ode to gaining fame at all cost

In these current times of, rather than Warhol's famous "15 minutes of fame," we get 15 million hits on the Internet, before the crowd moves on to the next big thing, the idea of a movie comedy based around someone so obsessed with getting famous that he'll do anything to achieve it sounds like it could be fun.

For a very few minutes a new movie called CRAZY FAMOUS, written and produced by Bob Farkas and directed by Paul Jarrett, might have you thinking that it will be just that.

Soon however -- after the noticeable lack of talent, creativity or amusement in the screenplay and dialog kicks in -- the movie becomes progressively worse as it plods along. TrustMovies suspects that most of the blame must rest, not on director Jarrett (shown at right), who does a professional job technically and simply gives us what his writer/producer, Mr. Farkas (shown below) has handed him to serve up: an interesting premise that begins goofily enough before quickly descending into a swamp of tired cliches, cutesy caricatures and, yes, more fart jokes.

This is particularly too bad for the actors on board because they are, to a man and woman, pleasant enough and probably quite talented under other circumstances that would show them to their advantage rather than making them grate on us something fierce. The obviousness and stupidity of the screenplay and dialog forces most of the actors to simply serve what's on the page, which thoroughly undercuts any kind of performance they might deliver. The single exception to this comes via the surprisingly smart and thoroughly professional job done by an actor new to me, Richard Short (shown below and at bottom, right), playing a mental patient named "Smith" who doubles as a secret agent with a nifty British accent. (Mr. Short is British, so that was not difficult to achieve.) Whenever the camera and microphone remain on him, the movie grows bearable.

Otherwise, this silly film, with its bent-on-being-famous-for-no-good-reason hero, played by the affable-but-little-more Gregory Lay, below, goes from its cute beginning in which Mr. Lay, accompanied by a trampoline, does a strip-tease and then bounces into a forbidden area, to being institutionalized in an asylum in which, yes, every patient (two of them are seen further below) is a walking-talking cliche.

From the asylum into a plot to assassinate an evidently still-alive Osama bin Laden, the movie lurches along, with all the characters piling on board to serve its nitwit cause.

Along the way there is a little would-be romance for our hero, a look at his younger days as a fame seeker (that's Ashton Woerz, below), a later visit to his parents for some worthless guilt-tripping,

and government bad guys, a car chase, bullets flying, and then Osama and his nurse -- all of this crammed into a mere 78 minutes that somehow seem much longer.

I hate to stomp on what was probably someone's labor of love. On the other hand, since I spent the time first watching and then writing about this film, I feel it might be worth warning others: Unless you've a very high tolerance for the ridiculous, maybe look elsewhere for your entertainment.

From Gravitas Ventures, Crazy Famous will hit VOD, Digital, and DVD this coming Tuesday, January 9 -- for purchase and/or rental.

On Blu-ray/DVD: Iceland's Foreign Language Film submission, Grímur Hákonarson's RAMS

Though lauded with critical hosannas (95% critic-positive on Rotten Tomatoes), RAMS, the supposed "deadpan comedy" that was Iceland's entry into the BFLF Oscar race, didn't make even the Academy's shortlist this past year. It's an odd film, all right, and although he realizes that comedy, especially, is a matter of taste, TrustMovies must admit that he laughed only once during the course of the entire movie -- at a scene involving a very heavy piece of farming machinery depositing its current load at the entrance to the local hospital.

The rest of the time, TM just sat there, not uninterested, but waiting for something, anything, perhaps that other shoe, to finally drop. As written and directed by Grímur Hákonarson, shown at left, what surprised me most about Rams was how obvious the film is as to where it is going and what it will expect of its audience -- all of which is very nearly assured from the opening couple of scenes. Very quickly we learn how important sheep farming is to this little country, and also that some of said sheep are sick unto death, probably via a greatly-feared infection called "scrapie." We also meet the two brothers -- old men who've not spoken in 40 years and yet farm sheep on large plots of land immediately adjacent to each other.

This is dead serious subject matter, and as written and directed by Mr. Hákonarson it is played more seriously than humorously. And not only by the two actors who plays the brothers -- Sigurður Sigurjónsson, as Gummi, and Theodór Júlíusson as Kiddi , shown above, with Kiddi on the left -- but by all the other performers who essay townspeople, farmers, veterinarians, police and so forth.

The tone here is very dry, however, as befits deadpan, but the incidents that pile up are not particularly believable and grow less so as the movie moves along (sheep illegally hidden away in the basement, bleating their hearts out and being overheard by a newcomer who is told -- and buys this -- that the sounds are being made by cats).

On the plus side are some lovely landscapes (verdant in summer and snowy in winter), perfectly valid performances, and the very idea of sheep farming and what it means to the local community -- which is brought home quite well, whether you perceive all this as comic or no.

By the finale we've gone through the entire expected scenario -- from the deadpan/barely-existing/would-be laughs to the farcical elements to the inevitable moments expected to move us. I might have been moved, but this film has such an utterly "manufactured" quality about it that I couldn't rise to the occasion. Perhaps you will; god knows, most of our critical establishment have.

From Cohen Media Group and running a mere 93 minutes, the movie makes its Blu-ray and DVDebut this coming Tuesday, June 28 -- for purchase or rental. Better than the film, I felt, were the DVD extras, in which the filmmaker give a very short interview in which he explains that he really wanted to credit all the individual sheep because they were that good (they are!).  Also included is a choice little short film that Hákonarson made back in 2007 entitled Wrestling, which features an odd Icelandic combination of wrestling plus dance moves and involves a love story between the two major wrestlers that plays out, again, in deadpan style. It's worth seeing. 

Mark Hendrickson's COLOSSUS? Well, it's colossally long -- and thuddingly obvious

Don't know about you, but if TrustMovies had to pick a genre of film in which it's really difficult to get things right, that would be the mockumentary. Yes, This Is Spinal Tap did it early on and relatively well (though not nearly as well as its reputation might imply), and Christopher Guest has made some very funny examples (hit and miss, I grant you, but much more of the former than the latter). Even a clever, unusual and relatively classy moc-doc like the recent Battle of Pussy Willow Creek still proved a little too long for its content and humor.

Now comes COLOSSUS, which begins with a newscast announcing the death -- shot by multiple gunmen -- of a major entrepreneur named Clark Larson, who has long operated out of Russia but who may be from the United Kingdom, since he speaks with a British accent. As played, and pretty well, by the film's writer/director Mark Hendrickson, this guy appears an impressive, if rather obvious, scam artist. His latest scam, which apparently has led to his untimely demise, is creating an "artificial rock band," whatever the hell that is. (No one here seems to know.) That accent, we soon learn, is as phony as everything else about Larson, for we see him alert his current crew to the fact he's really an American. He then bounces back and forth between Brit and non-Brit accents, depending on with whom he is conversing, for the remainder of the movie. This is sort of impressive, but also sort of "so what?".

From the start right through to the film's final shot, we see Larson scamming, and in the most predictable ways.  He's married and has a child (seen above), and has a former wife or mistress (below), with whom has had another kid, and he quickly cons his current and very young "squeeze" out of her apartment so he can use it for the film he is making about this artificial band.

Larson scams crew members, musicians, everyone with whom he comes into contact, in his own especially crass and pushy manner. Are we surprised by anything we see or hear here? Not in the least. One wonders if Hendrickson is new to the movie game? Oh, this is indeed his first film (according to the IMDB), but what I am asking is, has the guy ever seen any other movies? If so, does he not realize that his film is about as been-there-done-that as possible, given all that's come before?

Well, maybe it is I who have simply seen too many movies at this point. Because I had almost zero patience for anything I encountered in Colossus, having already encountered it time and time again. Worse, the mockumentary goes on (and on) for two hours and fifteen minutes. This is unconscionable -- particularly as most audiences will be able to see everything coming well before it clunks its way onto the screen. (That's the would-be, drug-addled songwriter,above)

Hendrickson's film nods to politics and history but in the most simple-minded manner. According to the IMDB, the budget here is estimated at $1,300,000. One wonders if this money came from current Mother Russia, as exemplified by her sleazy son Putin and his gang, since the film finally exemplifies everything that today's Russia stands for: money, power and nothing else. (Which is pretty much what the U.S. now stands for, too, but of course we haven't yet grown the balls to admit it.) But is the film satirizing this state of affairs -- or honoring it?  Hard to say.

In terms of "style," Colossus is competently enough handled most of the time, though Hendrickson's use of split screen when deals are made or arguments fester (above) is simultaneously clunky and not particularly revealing.

When everything's a scam -- wives, kids, girl friends, musicians, deals, the filmmaker, his accent -- we quickly lose interest and have no reason to remain involved. People talk and talk and talk some more, but we don't care or finally even listen. And we certainly don't laugh much: This is failed comedy, too. Even the music, which is purported to be real, proves only so-so. Unless you are very new to film itself, Colossus may come close to the most tiresome two-and-one-quarter hours in your movie history.

Hendrickson's opus opens in New York City this coming Friday, July 19, exclusively at the Quad Cinema, after opening in Russia last month at The Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Center in Saint Petersburg. Further playdates? Don't know, for I could not find mention of any future screenings on the movie's website.

In person at The Quad!  Filmmaker Mark Hendrickson 

is said to be appearing daily after each screening of his film. 

So, if you have questions, show up and ask. 

But I would check the Quad's schedule closer to 

the performance you plan to attend, just to make sure.  

DVDebut: Weirdos run riot in Dusty Bias' fresh-frozen "bizarrosity," PRAIRIE LOVE

I suppose it had to happen, but it still came as a shock: At long last, TrustMovies and his oft-spoken-of companion sat through a movie from that never-miss distributor, Film Movement, that actually, uh... missed. Even so, the 80-minute, mindless mind-bender called PRAIRIE LOVE is so damned bizarre that, for movie-lovers who demand something different above all else, TM feels he almost has to recommend that you try it. How did this extremely odd movie come into being? After a viewing, it seemed to me that the filmmaker/director/co-writer Dusty Bias (shown below) and his co-writers, Ashley Martin and Holly Lynn Ellis (the latter also stars in the film), decided to reach for the single most bizarre group of characters they could create -- and then made sure they neglected to answer the most-likely-to-be-asked questions about each. I can imagine the little group chortling, "That'll keep 'em off-balance!"
It does indeed.

Consequently viewers will either accept what they see and go with it, or finally cry uncle when it becomes clear that "character" as we know it has pretty much gone missing. This means that the actions, which arrive thick and fast and generally unhinged, proceed from three people who may be the most anti-social critters ever seen on screen. (Or if not anti-social, then completely bereft of any kind of social interaction skills over the course of their life.) In other words, what we have here is weirdness for weirdness' sake. This is not uninteresting, however: People this bizarre demand attention, of course. It is only after the fact that you may feel that your attention has somehow been filched.

Mr. Bias (interesting name!) gives us three characters: one he calls the Vagrant, played by Jeremy Clark, above, right, (until well over mid-way through I didn't realize that this was actually his "status"); the girl, played by Ms Ellis, above, left (something like a 20-year prison sentence is her excuse for weirdness, but that takes us, and her, only so far); and a fellow named NoDak (newcomer Garth Blomberg, below, in his tightie-white-ies) who has, unfortunately, the least character of all and so raises the most red flags.

These three interact -- if not physically and verbally, at least via letters -- and the outcome is, ummmm... iffy. Consequently the movie seems, finally, to be more manipulative than anything else. Yet, as I say, the weirdness is so strong and so constant that it does indeed hold you, even as you ask for more. And the director certainly has a good sense of how to capture the area visually. Mr. Bias grew up around these parts, and if you choose to read his statement in the press package, as I did (you can open it here), you may think that he had the kind of childhood that might have resulted in his becoming any of these three people. (If you do read the press package, do so after you've seen the movie.)

Prairie Love, has recently become available on DVD, and can also be viewed via VOD streaming from FilmMovement, for purchase or for rental. (And you do not have to become a Film Movement member to rent or purchase.) Simply click here -- and follow directions.