Earlier this year, I read Ray Bradbury’s original novel so I hope the upcoming HBO film version of Fahrenheit 451 will do justice to the book’s themes. The trailer below feels a bit more like Blade Runner than Bradbury but Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon both seem to be ideally cast.
So, we’ll see!
The next film in the Purge franchise is set to be released on the 4th of July! Hopefully, it’ll be more like the fantastic second film and nothing like the anemic third one.
(The third one does deserve some credit for allowing Kyle Secor to go totally over the top but all the stuff about Elizabeth Mitchell’s presidential campaign was sooooooooo boring!)
Apparently, The First Purge is going to be a prequel. It’s going to show us how the Purge came to be, which sounds … well, to be honest, I’ve never really cared how the Purge came to be. In fact, one reason the franchise worked is because they didn’t waste a lot of time explaining all the exact details about how the Purge came to be. So, I’m not really sure if this is a good idea.
There’s a new director for this installment so it’ll probably suck but here’s the trailer anyway!
With the release of Avengers: Infinity War right around the corner, Marvel has released a whole new collection of character posters! Just in case you were wondering who, from the MCU, is going to show up in Infinity War, here’s a partial reminder!
(By the way, the answer would appear to be just about everyone who has ever appeared in an MCU film!)
Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr)
Hulk (Mark Ruffalo)
Thor (Chris Hemsworth)
War Machine (Don Cheadle)
Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson)
Captain America (Chris Evans)
White Wolf (Sebastian Stan)
Falcon (Anthony Mackie)
Star-Lord (Chris Pratt)
Rocket and Groot (Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel)
Gamora (Zoe Saldana)
Nebula (Karen Gillan)
Drax (Dave Bautista)
Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen)
Vision (Paul Bettany)
Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman)
Spider-Man (Tom Holland)
Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch)
Wong (Benedict Wong)
Mantis (Pom Klementieff)
Okoye (Danai Gurira)
Shuri (Letitia Wright)
What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
If you were having trouble getting to sleep around two in the morning last night, you could have turned over to Starz and watched the 2016 film, The Comedian.
It probably wouldn’t have helped. It’s not that The Comedian is a particularly interesting movie or anything like that. Abysmally paced and full of dull dialogue, The Comedian would be the perfect cure for insomnia if it just wasn’t so damn loud. Robert De Niro plays an aging comedian named Jackie Burke and, in this movie, being an aging comedian means that you shout out your punch lines with such force that you almost seem to be threatening anyone who doesn’t laugh. However, the threats aren’t necessary because everyone laughs at everything Jackie says.
Actually, it’s a bit of an understatement to say that everyone laughs. In The Comedian, Jackie is such a force of pure, unstoppable hilarity that all he has to do is tell someone that they’re fat and literally the entire world will shriek with unbridled joy. The thing with laughter is that, in the real world, everyone laughs in a different way. Not everyone reacts to a funny joke with an explosive guffaw. Some people chuckle. Some people merely smile. But, in the world of The Comedian, everyone not only laughs the same way but they also all laugh at the same time. There’s never anyone who doesn’t immediately get the joke and, by that same token, there’s never anyone who can’t stop laughing once everyone else has fallen silent. The Comedian takes individuality out of laughter, which is a shame because the ability to laugh is one of the unique things that makes us human.
Anyway, The Comedian is about a formerly famous comedian who is now obscure. He used to have a hit TV show but now he’s nearly forgotten. Why he’s forgotten is never made clear because nearly everyone in the movie still seems to think that he’s the funniest guy in the world. Jackie’s an insult comic and people love it when he tells them that they’re overweight or when he makes fun of their sexual preferences. This would probably be more believable if Jackie was played by an actor who was a bit less intense than Robert De Niro. When De Niro starts to make aggressive jokes, you’re natural instinct is not so much to laugh as it is to run before he starts bashing in someone’s head with a lead pipe.
Anyway, the plot of the film is that Jackie gets into a fight with a heckler. The video of the fight is uploaded to YouTube, which leads to a scene where his manager (Edie Falco) stares at her laptop and announces, “It’s going viral!” Later on, in the movie, Jackie forces a bunch of old people to sing an obnoxious song with him and he goes viral a second time. I kept waiting for a shot of a computer screen with “VIRAL” blinking on-and-off but sadly, the movie never provided this much-needed insert.
In between beating up the heckler, ruining his niece’s wedding, and hijacking a retirement home, Jackie finds the time to fall in love with Harmony Schlitz (Leslie Mann), a character whose name alone is enough to The Comedian one of the most annoying films of all time. Harmony’s father is a retired gangster (Harvey Keitel) and you can’t help but wish that Keitel and De Niro could have switched roles. It wouldn’t have made the movie any better but at least there would have been a chance of Keitel going batshit insane whenever he took the stage to deliver jokes.
I’m not sure why anyone thought it would be a good idea to cast an actor like Robert De Niro as a successful comedian. It’s true that De Niro was brilliant playing a comedian in The King of Comedy but Rupert Pupkin was supposed to be awkward, off-putting, and not very funny. I’m not an expert on insult comics but, from what I’ve seen, it appears that the successful ones largely succeed by suggesting that they’re just having fun with the insults, that no one should take it personally, and that they appreciate any member of the audience who is willing to be a good sport. Jackie just comes across like a cranky old misogynist. Watching Jackie is like listening to your bitter uncle play Vegas. I guess it would help if Jackie actually said something funny every once in a while. A typical Jackie joke is to refer to his lesbian niece as being a “prince.” Speaking for myself, when it comes to Robert De Niro being funny, I continue to prefer the scene in Casino where he hosts the Ace Rothstein Show.
Perhaps the funniest thing about The Comedian is that, when it originally released into theaters, it was advertised as being “The Comedian, a Taylor Hackford film,” as if Taylor Hackford is some type of Scorsese-style auteur. Taylor Hackford has been making films for longer than I’ve been alive and he has yet to actually come up with any sort of signature style beyond point and shoot. The second funniest thing is that The Comedian was billed as a potential Oscar contender, up until people actually saw the damn thing.
Though it may have failed at the box office, The Comedian seems to show up on Starz quite frequently. They always seem to air it very late at night, as if they’re hoping people won’t notice.
Previous Insomnia Files:
4 Shots from 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots from 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
In honor of Marlon Brando’s birthday, here’s…
4 Shots From 4 Films
A Streetcar Named Desire (1952, dir by Elia Kazan)
Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967, dir by John Huston)
The Godfather (1972, dir by Francis Ford Coppola)
Last Tango in Paris (1973, dir by Bernardo Bertolucci)
On Sunday night, my family and I ended our Easter Sunday by watching Jesus Christ Superstar Live. Now, before I say anything else about NBC’s latest live musical production, there are a few things that I should make clear:
In college, there was this girl in my dorm who started the semester as a pagan, spent a month as an evangelical, and then ended the semester as a pagan again. When she was going through her evangelical phase, she would listen to the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack constantly, with the volume turned up so loud that you could hear it up and down the hallway. Seriously. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. After three days, I was sick of hearing it. I found myself wondering if anyone had ever been driven to murder over having to listen to Heaven On Their Minds one too many times. Fortunately, something happened to cause her to once again lose her faith and she went back to listening to Fall Out Boy.
For quite some time afterward, I would instinctively cringe whenever I heard any of the songs from Jesus Christ Superstar. In fact, it wasn’t until I first came across the 1973 film version that I was able to once again appreciate it as a musical and overlook its association with that annoying pagan. From the first time I watched it, I really liked that movie and, every time I rewatch it, I like it even more. When I started watching Sunday’s production, I was seriously wondering if I’d be able to set aside my feelings about both the pagan and the movie and judge the television version on its own merits.
Well, I shouldn’t have worried. While I still prefer the original film version, Sunday’s television production was wonderfully conceived and executed. From the first note of music to the final curtain call, Jesus Christ Superstar Live In Concert captured my attention and refused to let it go, keeping me watching even through the lengthy commercial interruptions. The musicians and the singers sounded great, or at least they did once the audience mics were turned down. (At the start of the show, the audience was so loud that they threatened to drown out Heaven On Their Minds.) The production design was simply amazing, combining downtown New York with ancient Judea in a way that reminded us just how timeless the musical’s story truly is. (The 1973 film opened with a bunch of hippies driving through the desert. The 2018 production opened with Jesus’s name being spray painted on a wall. Both openings felt perfect for the story that was being told.)
As for the cast, Brandon Victor Dixon was compellingly intense as Judas and Norm Lewis was properly intimidating as Caiaphas. The big marquee name was Alice Cooper, who obviously enjoyed playing the production’s burlesque version of Herod. That said, the entire show was stolen by Ben Daniels, who was wonderfully conflicted as Pilate. I wasn’t as impressed by Sara Bareilles as Mary Magdalene, or I should say that I apparently wasn’t as impressed with her performance as everyone else on twitter. (To me, she seemed a bit too peppy, especially in the early numbers. I know I’m in the minority as far as that goes.) Finally, in the role of Jesus, John Legend grew on me. Of course, in the show, Jesus doesn’t really become an interesting character until he sings “Poor Jerusalem” and that was the moment that Legend himself seemed to truly feel comfortable with the role.
It’s probably pointless to compare the 1973 film to the 2018 version but still, I did find it interesting how the live version reimagined the relationship between Jesus and Judas. In the 1973 version, Jesus is largely aloof for almost the entire film. Judas seems to be frustrated because he can’t figure out what Jesus is planning to do and Jesus himself never seems to feel that he can allow himself to get truly close to anyone. In the film, Judas’s anger is the anger of someone who has spent the last few years of his life following a leader and who is now wondering if he’s been wasting his time. He’s like a Democrat who has just realized that his party is even less interested in reigning in Wall Street than the Republicans.
In the live version, the Jesus/Judas relationship came across as being a bromance gone wrong. In this version, Judas’s disatisfaction is less political and more jealousy over Jesus being closer to the Magdalene than to him. When Judas snaps at Jesus in the 2018 version, Jesus actually seems to get personally offended. The dynamic between Dixon and Legend is definitely different from the one between Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson in the original version. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s one of the wonderful things about theater. When successfully done, each subsequent production brings something new to an old story.
Jesus Christ Superstar definitely worked. As far as the current wave of live television musicals is concerned, this was the best one yet.
Who was Barabbas?
The simple answer to that is that Barabbas was the prisoner who, according to the Gospels, Pontius Pilate released during Passover. As the story goes, Pilate gave the people the choice. He could either release Barabbas or Jesus. For what crime was Barabbas being held? The Gospel of Matthew merely says that Barabbas was a “notorious prisoner.” Mark and Luke both write that he was involved in a recent riot and that he was a murderer. The Gospel of John refers to him as being a bandit, which may have been another term for revolutionary. Regardless of what crime he had committed, the people overwhelmingly called for Barabbas to be released and for Jesus to be crucified. What happened to Barabbas after he was set free is not recorded but has been the subject of a good deal of speculation over the centuries.
(Of course, there are some scholars who believe that the Barabbas story was simply an invention of later writers, designed to shift the responsibility for the crucifixion away from the Romans. There’s also some who say that Jesus and Barabbas were actually the same person and that the inclusion of the Barabbas story was meant to indicate that Jesus was actually a revolutionary who was working to free Judea from Roman role. I imagine Dan Brown will eventually base a novel on this theory, so look forward to hearing your grandma debating the historicity of Barabbas at some point in the future.)
Back to the original question, who was Barabbas?
According to the 1961 film of the same name, Barabbas was Anthony Quinn.
Based on a novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Swedish author, Pär Lagerkvist, Barabbas opens with Pilate (Anthony Kennedy) making his infamous offer. Barabbas or Jesus? Perhaps the only person more shocked than Pilate by the people’s decision is Barabbas himself. A brutish and violent man, Barabbas is looking forward to returning to his old life but, as he leaves the prison, he finds himself fascinated by the sight of Jesus stoically carrying the cross, heading to the fate that Barabbas was spared. Later, Barabbas witnesses the Crucifixion and is shaken when, upon Jesus’s death, the sky turns black.
(Director Richard Fleischer shot the Crucifixion during an actual solar eclipse, so that the sky actually did turn black during filming. It’s a stunning scene.)
For the rest of his life, Barabbas is haunted by both his narrow escape from death and his subsequent notoriety. When Barabbas tries to reunite with his former lover, Rachel (Silvana Mangano), he discovers that not only does she now want nothing to do with him but that she has also become a follower of Jesus. (Later, in a surprisingly graphic scene, Rachel is stoned to death.) Barabbas becomes convinced that he cannot die and he becomes increasingly reckless in his behavior. Over the next few decades, he finds himself sold into slavery and forced to spend 20 years working in the harsh sulfur mines of Sicily. He befriends a Christian named Sahak (Vittorio Gassman) and, with him, is trained to be a gladiator by the sadistic Torvald (Jack Palance). Eventually, Barabbas finds himself rejected by both the Romans and the Christians while Rome burns all around him.
Barabbas is a film that really took me by surprise. I’ve seen a lot of Biblical and Roman films from the 50s and 60s and I was expecting that Barabbas would be another sumptuously produced but slow-paced epic, one that would inevitably feature stiff dialogue and overly reverential performances. I mean, don’t me wrong. I happen to love spectacle and therefore, I enjoy watching most of those old historical and religious epics. But still, for modern audiences, these films can often seem rather … well, hokey.
But Barabbas was totally different from what I was expecting. As wonderfully played by Anthony Quinn, Barabbas wanders through most of the film in a state of haunted confusion. Even at the end of the film, after he’s met St. Peter (Harry Andrews), Barabbas doesn’t seem to fully understand what he believes or how he’s become one of the most notorious men in Rome. Quinn plays Barabbas almost like a wild animal, one that has been cornered and trapped by his own infamy. The more Barabbas struggles against his fate, the more trapped he becomes. Barabbas may be a brute but, the film suggests, even a brute can find some sort of redemption. Quinn gets good support from the entire supporting cast. Jack Palance is perfectly evil as Torvald while Vittorio Gassman, Silvana Mangano, and Ernest Borgnine bring some needed nuance to characters who, in lesser hands, could have just been cardboard believers.
Barabbas is a surprisingly dark film. When Rachel is stoned, the camera doesn’t flinch from showing just how cruel an execution that was. Nor does the camera flinch from the violent brutality of the gladiatorial games. When Barabbas is sold into slavery, the sulfur mines of Sicily are depicted in Hellish detail and practically the only thing that saves Barabbas from spending the rest of his life being smothered under a cloud of sulfur is a giggly Roman woman who decides to buy Barabbas so that he can serve as a good luck charm. The scenes of Barabbas’s skill of a gladiator are contrasted with the bloodthirsty crowd demanding and cheering death. Even when Barabbas joins the Christians in the Roman catacombs, he discovers that they want nothing to do with him, suggesting that they believe in forgiveness for everyone but him. The spectacle of Rome is displayed but so is the terror of what lies underneath the city’s ornate surface. If Barabbas is occasionally a ruthless or unsentimental character, one need only look at the world he lives in to understand why.
With the exception of a few slow scenes at the start of the film, director Richard Fleischer does a good job of keeping the action moving. It’s a long film but it never becomes a boring one. In the end, thanks to Quinn’s performance and the film’s unflinching portrayal of life in ancient Rome, Barabbas is a biblical epic for people who usually don’t like biblical epics.
“I am the future!” Peter Stegman (Timothy Van Patten) announced in the 1982 film, Class of 1984, and, in many ways, he was correct. Though it’s easy to be snarky about the fashion choices made by Stegman’s gang, Class of 1984‘s portrait of a school where teachers have taken to carrying guns to protect themselves is still relevant today.
One thing that set Class of 1984 apart from other exploitation films was that it acknowledged something that most people aren’t willing to admit. Sometimes, the worst people can create the most beautiful music. This is a point that was made quite literally in the scene below.
As the scene begins, the new music teacher — Andy Norman (Perry King) — is just trying to start his class when suddenly Stegman and his gang decide to drop in. At first, Andy tells them to go away but then, suddenly, Stegman sits down at a piano and starts to play.
Timothy Van Patten, who would later go on to become an award-winning television director, reportedly actually played every note heard in this scene. For a few brief seconds, Peter Stegman is revealed to be something more than just another high school psycho. When Stegman sits in front of that piano, he becomes an artist and, throughout the film, both Andy Norman and the audience occasionally wonder who Peter Stegman could have been under different circumstances.
Of course, ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Peter Stegman could have been a concert pianist but instead, he went down a different path. Over the course of the film, Stegman is responsible for not only Michael J. Fox getting stabbed but Roddy McDowall getting blown up. When Andy makes one final attempt to reach out to him, Stegman tries to cut his hand off. Now wonder Andy eventually allowed Stegman to plunge through that skylight.
But even as Stegman falls to his death and discovers that he’s not the future, it’s hard not to think about that beautiful piece of music that he played just a few days earlier and wonder about what could have been.
Peter Stegman. R.I.P.
The 1987 film Gor opens with a nerdy college professor (played by Urbano Barberini, of Demons and Opera fame) giving perhaps the worst lecture in the history of underwhelming lectures. The professor explains that there is a counter-earth, a place that he claims is known as Gor. Gor shares the same orbit as Earth but it’s linearly opposed to Earth, which apparently makes it impossible to see. However, the professor says that his father gave him a ring which can transport the user to Gor. The only problem is that the professor has not figured out how to use the ring.
The students all look incredibly bored with the lecture and I don’t blame them. Not only does the professor seem to be rambling but he doesn’t even offer up any visual aides. He could have at least utilized a powerpoint presentation or something. Instead, his only teaching aide is a whiteboard on which he’s written “counter-earth.” I have to wonder what their final exam is going to look like. “True or false. Your professor is a freaking loon.”
(I found myself wondering what university would possibly grant tenure to some guy who thinks he owns a magic ring but then I remembered Evergreen College.)
The professor’s name is Tarl Cabot and I think that’s a good deal of his problem right there. When you give a child a name like Tarl Cabot, you’re pretty much guaranteeing that he’s going to grow up believing that he has a magic ring that’ll transport him to another planet.
Of course, in Tarl’s case, it turns out that the ring does just that. After his teaching assistant dumps him so that she can go on a date with another professor, Tarl crashes his car and when he wakes up, he finds himself on Gor. Apparently, the ring only works if you crash your car or something.
As for Gor itself, it turns out to be kind of a dump. It’s a huge desert. Seriously, check out this counter-earth:
If Tarl wanted to see a desert, he could have just driven around Southern California and saved himself a lot of trouble.
Yes, there is trouble in Gor. No sooner has Tarl arrived then he’s being attacked by a bunch of barbarians on horseback. The barbarians are led by the evil Sarm (played by Oliver Reed). Much as with the case of Tarl Cabot, I think that once you name a child Sarm, you’ve pretty much guaranteed the way that his life is going to turn out. Anyway, Tarl somehow survives being attacked by the barbarians. He even manages to kill Sarm’s son, which leads to Sarm declaring that he wants Tarl dead.
Fortunately, Tarl is eventually rescued by another group of barbarians. This group is led by Talena (Rebecca Ferratti) and she wants Tarl to help her rescue her father from Sarm’s fortress. But how can Tarl help when he’s literally useless? Don’t worry! The good barbarians are willing to train Tarl. One montage later, Tarl is now a master swordsman. Now, all Tarl has to do is dress like a barbarian and then track down a little person who can serve as a guide to Sarm’s fortress!
And what a fortress it is! Sarm may be evil but he likes to make sure that both his guests and his slaves have a good time. Sarm welcomes Tarl to the fortress and even tries to recruit him over to his side. (So apparently, Sarm’s over that whole “you killed my son” thing.) Sarm understands that the best way to recruit Tarl is with a dance number! As Sarm laughs lustfully, the slaves put on a show. It’s somewhat out-of-place but at least it distracts from the rest of the film.
Anyway, there’s a lot of problems with Gor but the main one is that the place itself just doesn’t seem like it’s worth all the trouble. After spending years trying to figure out how to get to the planet, Tarl arrives and discovers that it’s basically the same desert that was used in almost every post-apocalyptic film made in the 80s and 90s. (In fact, judging from John Carter, it’s still being used today.) What I always wonder about this type of movie is 1) why is the other planet always full of humans who speak perfect English and 2) why do all of these planets feature a society that resembles that ancient Roman Empire? Apparently, swords and arrows are literally universal weapons because they’re used on every planet in the universe.
When I first saw that this film starred Urbano Barberini, I assumed that it was going to turn out to be an Italian production. (In the late 80s, there were several Italian films that featured barbarians fighting in post-apocalyptic landscapes.) However, it turns out that Gor was a South African production, co-produced by the legendary Harry Alan Towers and directed by an American named Firtz Kiersch. (Kiersch also directed the first film version of Children of the Corn.) That said, the film itself is so ineptly dubbed and the production values are so low-budget that it would still be easy to mistake Gor for a film directed by Bruno Mattei or Claudio Fragasso.
Because he’s so badly dubbed, it’s difficult to really judge Barberini’s performance as Tarl Cabot. At the very least, he looks good with a sword in his hand and he’s cute — if never quite believable — when he plays Tarl as a neurotic physicist. However, Barberini can’t really compete with Oliver Reed, who devours every inch of scenery that he can find. Reed bellows and laughs and appears to be drunk in almost every scene in which he appears but at least he seems to be having a good time. Reed is also required to wear a silly helmet in most of his scenes and I sincerely hope that he got to take it home with him.
Oliver Reed isn’t the only familiar face to pop up in Gor. There’s also Jack Palance. Palance only shows up for about two minutes and he looks rather confused as he discusses his plan to conquer the world. (Apparently, Palance returned in Gor‘s sequel.) For two minutes of screen time, Palance managed to score himself third billing in the opening credits of Gor, above even Oliver Reed! Way to go, Jack!
Anyway, Gor is a pretty stupid movie. I appreciated the random dance number but otherwise, it’s fairly dull and only occasionally enlivened by Oliver Reed’s refusal to go gently into that dark night. I’m going to guess that films like this were popular with filmgoers who saw themselves as real-life Tarl Cabots and who spent their spare time thinking, “Nobody will laugh at me once they see me with a sword!” I caught the film yesterday on Comet TV, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite channels for watching bad movies.
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1878)
“Me and him are totally different.”
— Leo (Caleb Galati), brother of Wendel (Steven J. Mihaljevich), in The Misguided (2018)
Oh, poor Leo.
From the first minute that he appears on screen, Leo is a familiar type. He’s handsome He’s friendly, though there are always hints that he has secrets that he’s hiding. He’s ambitious but he’s not particularly driven. He seems like the type who is more likely to have a good plan than to understand how to actually pull it off. We’ve all known someone like Leo. Leo has just dropped out of college and he’s also just been kicked out of the place where he was staying.
What’s Leo to do? Sleep on the streets or maybe spend a few weeks living with his brother, Wendel? Looking at Wendel, it’s hard not to feel that you’ve stepped into a time portal and caught a glimpse of who Leo is going to be in another few years. When Wendel isn’t using drugs, he’s dealing them. Wendel is friendly, except for when he’s going out of his way to be menacing. Wendel is charismatic and even people who should know better are drawn to Wendel. And yet, it’s also hard not to suspect that Wendel might be a sociopath. Like Leo, Wendel will be a familiar character to most viewers. We’ve all known a Wendel.
Along with having a place to stay, Wendel also has a car. The only problem is that it’s not actually his car. The car belongs to Wendel’s ex-girlfriend, Sanja (Jasmine Nibali). When Sanja and her sister, Vesna (Katherine Langford, who viewers may recognize from 13 Reasons Why) come by to get the car, they meet Leo. And soon, Sanja and Leo are a couple.
Of course, not everyone is happy about the idea of Sanja and Leo being together. Vesna is convinced that Leo is just as bad as his brother. Sanja’s father (Athan Bellos) is almost violently protective and is not happy to come home and find Leo relaxing in the family’s swimming pool. As for Wendel, he claims not to care but you get the feeling that he’s lying. That’s actually a feeling that you get a lot with Wendel. But Sanja doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Soon, she and Leo are even talking about leaving Perth and moving to Melbourne together. It sounds like a nice plan but will Leo be able to escape from his older brother’s destructive influence?
At times, it feels as if The Misguided is a plotless film but that feeling is just as deceptive as one of Wendel’s stories. The film’s story plays out at a pace that is almost leisurely but always steady. Whether we’re watching Wendel’s passive aggressive interaction with his brother or the genuinely sweet scenes of Leo and Sanja exploring Perth, we’re always aware that Leo is ultimately going to have to choose whether to escape his brother or to remain forever in Wendel’s shadow. Shannon Alexander’s direction emphasizes gritty realism with a few stylistic flourishes. Occasionally, the film speeds up. A few scenes end with a freeze frame. At one point, the image flickers as if Wendel’s drug-addled consciousness has infected the film itself. In the style of early Godard, all of this suggests that we’re watching a world that has become unbalanced.
It’s also a well-acted movie. The characters all seem real and, as a result, you care about them even if they sometimes seem to be incapable of doing the right thing. Caleb Galati and Jasmine Nibali have a really nice chemistry. They’re a cute couple and you can’t help but hope that things work out well for them. The sibling relationship between Sanja and Vesna, with its mix of jealousy and sincere concern, felt real as well. I’m the youngest of four sisters. I could definitely relate. I also particularly liked the performance of Athan Bellos, who is so intense and overprotective as Sanja and Vesna’s father that he’s actually a bit scary at times.
And then there’s Steven J. Mihaljevich, who is force of destructive nature in the role of Wendel. Mihaljevich plays Wendel as the type of person who will smile even as he tells you absolutely the worst thing that he possibly could. At the same time, Mihaljevich is also charismatic enough that you believe that Sanja could have actually been attracted to him before meeting Leo. As played by Mihaljevich, Wendel is the bad influence that we’ve all known at some point in our life. Whenever Wendel talks to anyone, you’re never quite sure whether he’s going to laugh and kill them but you’re always intrigued enough to want to find out.
The Misguided will soon be available on Amazon, Google, Vimeo and iTunes.
Through the Shattered Lens 