Brief Interviews With Hideous Men: Grade A

A
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men (2009)

Julianne Nicholson, Timothy Hutton, Bobby Cannavale, John Krazinski; Co-writer and Director John Krazinski.

Nicholson is Sara, a graduate student doing anthropological research by interviewing on film a sample of young men (20 to 40 years old) about their attitudes toward women. We see short clips of her conducting the interviews and parts of the interviews themselves. The men are uniformly self-centered, mendacious, un-self-aware misogynists. That makes their statements humorously ironic, so we get the message that this movie is a postmodern comedy. Taken in that spirit, it is indeed funny, although not LOL hilarious. But postmodern humor never is.

Sara is played straight, not ironically, and she is horrified to discover the truth about the alien species called men. When her own boyfriend (Krazinski) cheats on her then comes back with a compelling, heartfelt apology and explanation, she is loathe to believe a word of it, since she now knows men are all lying, manipulative bastards. But could this be different?

The story line of the movie is thus slight, and there is neither deep psychological insight nor outright laughter. The entertainment value is in the subtle, postmodern, ironic rib-tickling. Acting by some of the interviewed men is outstanding, but Nicholson’s performance is unremarkable, and I can’t get past “Jim” in The Office when I see Krazinski. He is a competent actor but he never steps outside the range of expression that is so familiar from that TV series.

But what makes the film terrific is Krazinski’s directing. He has found his calling there, even though the movie is not well-integrated overall. The interview clips are starkly edited; lots of jumpy cuts make each interview a collage rather than a real soliloquy, but that’s why they are so interesting. There is not a microsecond of slack. They are 100% very good acting, even though some segments might be only a single gesture or a single phrase lasting no more than 5 seconds. That’s an innovative and very effective technique for producing outstanding scenes of superior acting, and an educated visual sensibility easily accepts the format. The director has a gifted eye for micro-acting.

There are several other directorial innovations, or at least interesting choices and embellishments, many reminiscent of Woody Allen, such as when one character tells a story of a girl stood up at the airport by her boyfriend, and the storyteller appears in the scene along with the girl. Very effective. The anthropological interviews are against a stark brick wall background. Elsewhere in the movie, one character gives a great speech to a closed door. There are experiments with color and movement and many other directorial gestures that make this movie an excellent exploitation of the medium of film. Krazinski the director is a revelation and the story line is amusing in its own right, so overall a big success for this one.

The Legend of God's Gun: Grade B

B
The Legend of God’s Gun (2007)
Robert Bones, Kirkpatrick Thomas. Co-writer, cinematographer & director Mike Bruce.

This stunning homage to the spaghetti westerns is gorgeous to look at and a fine example of postmodern filmmaking. Gritty handheld western sequences are solarized and colorized with abandon. Costumes and sets are terrific. Photography is very appealing. The attractive, original and attention grabbing music is mostly in the spaghetti style, but sometimes diverges in creative ways. Directing captures Leone’s and Eastwood’s look beautifully, although with a strong ironic sense of humor. Sound engineering is likewise on target, but ironically over the top. Camera work is a pleasure. And that’s it. There is no story, just a couple of half-hearted goofy ideas. There is no character development (actually few clearly identifiable characters), no obvious script, and very little dialog. What dialog there is, often is anachronistically inappropriate or heavily ironic, and often the sound is out of sync with the lips, as it often was in the Italian originals. This is just a series of western scenes, cowboys on the dusty trail, gunfights, bar fights, closeups of sweaty, cigar-chomping faces. Acting is beyond bad. It had to be ironic acting to be that bad. In a sense, this film is a tragic near-miss. With a story and a few characters it could have been an important homage film, but what it lacks in traditional structure, this youthfully exuberant, zero-budget adventure balances with dazzling color, flair, and style.