Five Movies for after Memorial Day! 🇺🇸 🍿
Thoughts on 'Off Ramp,' 'Scooter LaForge,' 'Mind Body Spirit,' 'The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed,' and 'The Wheel of Heaven.'
Dear Moviegoers,
Sitting at my desk throughout Memorial Day, I couldn’t help but think of what’s been lost and what we’re struggling to regain and find in America. From reproductive health care to voting rights to school lunches, the fascist regressives and the fairly good do-nothings appear to be winning in setting the country back by several decades. Most of us know who we should vote for come November, even if begrudgingly, and all of us grasp just how needed a forward-thinking leadership is.
How much would it cost to run an all-day marathon of righteous political movies on a major television network, and what should be programmed to fill the broadcast? I recall filmmaker and satirical s**t-kicker
wanting to do a push to show his incendiary documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 in the lead-up to the 2004 Presidential election, to remind everyone how awful “Dubya” Bush was, and to reverse course on many conservative (and liberal-enabled) programs, including the War on Terror. A novel idea, I think.Can we go further? Can we interrupt scheduled shows on multiple channels for a special twenty-four-hour lineup of great and thought-provoking films?
No.
No, but it’d be cool if we could.
What we can do is recommend watchlists. I challenge American moviegoers to consider the issues important to them and to encourage friends, family, and neighbors to screen or stream some selected cinema - meant to inspire, meant to get people moving, and meant to fire up voters. Provide links, provide physical media, and provide context. Give it a shot.
Feel free to send along your election watchlists to me by email or leave them in a comment below - I’ll be sure to relay these flick picks in a future newsletter. And if anyone wants to do a letter exchange on this subject, I’m ready to play.
And now, our movie reviews. Enjoy.
Directed by regional cinematographer (Open) Nathan Tape, Off Ramp was one of my most anticipated selections at last year’s New Orleans Film Festival. It’s about a journey of Juggalos, for Juggalos, by Juggalos, told in the tradition of a life-positive horror-rap melody. As an awkward teen, I once painted my face in the colors of the Insane Clown Posse (like a Juggalo does) for Halloween (while wearing a Limp Bizkit shirt. Don’t judge), so any independent film about the followers and the fans has me intrigued from the start.
Cut together here and there with footage of stray dogs and previous ICP events - known as “The Gathering” - Off Ramp’s strength is found in its script. Beyond the premise of two Juggalo misfits on a road trip from the deep south to an upcoming Gathering, there’s gold found in the interactions between the strangers and neighbors and enemies and lovers that populate the story, which hosts a few revelatory twists and joyful turns. That human spark and relatability amid Mississippi dumps and macabre beauty gives life to Off Ramp. All of its life.
In between often-heard voiceovers about “being family” within this community of face-painted outcasts, the movie overcomes any boring and redundant potholes by featuring fun scenarios and quirky supporting characters. The great actor David Jensen, for example, plays an exhausted convenience store clerk who lives on the edge of southern poverty and Confederate pride. When one of our Juggalos buys a bunch of Faygo soda bottles (“Juggalo Juice”), the clerk gets into a monologue rant about how a birthday clown once abused his mother. This is a two-minute or so scene and is barely being paid attention to by one of the protagonists. The Faygo is of dire urgency, it seems. Moments like that are priceless. 3.5/5 (coming soon)
The one-man-band filmmaker, artist, and zine maker Ethan Minsker has turned his gaze to fellow New York City artist and denizen Scooter LaForge, whose body of creative works are likely to catch the eye of anyone passing by from near or far. Minsker is no stranger to directing documentaries, as he’s made plenty that range from short to feature-length (including one about himself). With A Life of Art, however, Minsker paints his own visual aesthetic and playfully positive attitude over a man whose own style of art would be enough color for any film. To call this movie colorful would be an understatement. It’s practically coated with sugar. And it’s delicious.
Scooter LaForge, as a subject, has a story that’s likely too familiar for particular viewers to resonate with - a seen there heard that kinda thing. But, A Life of Art if anything does on the whole shine via its own bright light and rainbow-colored arch. I feel that small-town kids will connect deeply with Scooter’s past and present tales, and I will suggest too that other moviegoers will find the urge to, at least, try finger-painting afterward. Minsker’s films tend to have that inspirational effect, the kind that makes one move and get some hands dirty. Add Scooter LaForge on top of that, and there may be some trouble. Good trouble, mind you.
A Life of Art goes from Scooter’s early days in New Mexico to his life in San Francisco to his new adventure in NYC. He goes over his responses to pain and tragedy, from personal to national to global, and how art - of every kind and at all costs - can heal and keep us all moving forward. If there’s a more optimistic and encouraging man and movie out right now, let me know. 3.5/5 (now available to stream, and for rent/purchase)
The main character of Mind Body Spirit - one of four that are on-screen - from beginning to end, goes from naive to insufferable to scared to finding “her power” in pretty smooth transitions. Of course, being a found-footage horror picture, finding one’s “power” may not be a positive. Indeed, actress Sarah J. Bartholomew - playing the lead Anya - has been given the difficult task of completely guiding us through this film while doing the business of guiding us through her role. She’s completely game and exercises her exorcism in the most welcome of ways. Gimmicky without being exploitative, a trip into the pathetic and lost self, Mind Body Spirit’s small scale opens up enough to be compelling and tense - at least here and there.
The camera situation in this found-footage flick is by way of social media video influencer tools and is rarely used for anything else, like wandering in dark places or crying out for help. Zoom-type conversations are made use of too, but the main conceit and reason for the season is in the yoga self-help videos that Anya (Sarah J. Bartholomew) is trying to develop. It’s all creatively dry and awkward for her until she discovers a book of spells that her mysterious Grandmother - whose old home Anya has moved into to begin a new life - has left behind. Guess what happens after?
A young woman who takes a strange and new path in life, only to find just how in over her head she is, made for some great dramatic tension and performance from Bartholomew, who again has to carry everything on her character’s frail shoulders. As a horror, Mind Body Spirit isn’t ho-hum, but rather tried and true. There are glimmers of genre evolution, using YouTube-style ad breaks at the right moments of fright, and the film overall never wears thin. It’s efficient, it’s well done, but it’s also, at least partially, stuck with conventions. That’s good, that’s ok, that’s to be expected. Not surprising. 3/5 (now available for rent/purchase)
It’s all too easy to be charmed by Joanna Arnow’s brand of sand-paper-dry and wonderfully awkward comedic compositions, and it’s easier to be confounded by all of that. In her first narrative feature, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, Arnow directs and stars as a young big-city woman, working in a tedious office job by day and holding a submissive BDSM relationship by night. This is a sort of twist on the idealistic businesswoman seeking more in life movie, and maybe it’s a twist of a knife to the belly. However sharp, it’s also a comfort and an affirmation for the detached yet living souls out and about in the world.
My interpretation of the film may be against the tide of other reviews, but I’m not worried about that. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed is a modern laugh-out-loud classic that, oddly enough for me, recalled memories of Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances, specifically the rolling boulders sequence. In this film, Joanna presents and confronts the boulders not in a dance of anxious slapstick life and death as Buster did, but in a one-step out-of-the-way manner, for her to now observe the chaos from the safety of the sidelines, and to do so with a smile that doesn’t show. It’s great.
Silent film comparison aside, Joanna’s movie couldn’t be anything but a pure-bred talkie. There’s no music and no score - just immense quiet, just pronounced breathing, and just people figuring out what to say and how to react. Shot with this in mind, the film has an “every frame a painting” look to it, where at any given shot, a new story is told. And each of those stories makes for one of the best films that I’ve seen in years. 5/5 (now available for rent/purchase)
Completing a cycle of meta-chaos and matryoshka doll storytelling, filmmaker and master of the cosmic weird Joe Badon has crafted his most awesome and best movie to date. I’ve previously been hesitant and lukewarm on his projects, as they tend to be under the lock and key of his brain, and often would tell a little too much of a tale. That being typed, I’ve always been intrigued by his films, his interests, and his progression as an artist. With The Wheel of Heaven, Badon has cracked an alpha code from deep within my very being.
Teased many moons ago with the prequel The Blood of the Dinosaurs, The Wheel of Heaven represents worlds within worlds, dreams within dreams, all to be toyed around and played with. A woman goes through multiple variants of herself, sometimes in a choose-your-own-adventure (or destiny) book, something just in her imagination, and sometimes in conversations between her very real actress self from behind the scenes and Badon himself. Confused? Don’t be. Just ride the wave? Sure, but it’s fun to try and figure this puzzle out. Think of it in the style of Anthony Hopkins’ Slipstream or David Lynch’s Inland Empire, only with more of a poker face.
One scene in particular, shown early on in quick clips, fits, and bursts, is my single favorite thing that Badon has ever made, within my favorite movie that he’s made thus far. It’s a horror birthing sequence, that plays alongside a children’s show set. Or maybe it’s happening in the future. Or in another film altogether, still being conceived as it is being presented. Get it? The Wheel of Heaven is spectacular in its do-it-yourself aesthetic and journey upon journey upon journey storytelling, which goes from meta to narrative to documentary as fast as a cut from a pair of scissors. And I wouldn’t cut anything from it. 5/5 (currently touring and coming soon)