HACK MAN; HACKMAN

Happy Friday the 13th everybody!

Check out my Phoenix Magazine column on Friday the 13th, Part 2, playing this evening at 9:30 p.m. in actual 35mm at Majestic Cinema Tempe 7...

...and also The Birdcage...

...playing on June 17 as next week's "Tuesday Classic" at Harkins Theatres.

DRAG INTERACTIONS

Now streaming:

Makeup--Sacha is a quiet young French chef who has moved from Paris to London to start work as an online food critic. We see that his hand is afflicted at times with cramps and tremors from some neurological problem; presumably this is what necessitated the career shift. He's rented a room from Pete, a friendly if somewhat aggressively brusque young stockbroker.

Director Hugo André plays Sacha; he co-wrote the script with Will Masheter, who plays Pete. The story doesn't go any direction you're very likely to guess. It seems, initially, as if Sacha will be the focus, but instead he's mostly the observer of the drama.

The superficially "manly" Pete, it turns out, is an aspiring drag burlesque performer, unbeknownst to his toxically masculine work circle. He senses a sympathetic ear in his new housemate, inviting Sacha to see him perform in cabaret, and sharing the motivations and secret identity with the bemused fellow that he hides from his coworkers. The reserved Sacha is initially taken aback, unsure how to respond to Pete's bluff overtures and startling, unsolicited candor. Very gradually, however, the friendship deepens.

That's pretty much all there is to this low-budget festival fave, but it's well-acted, and it has a certain authenticity and unembarrassed sensitivity that can't be dismissed. It insists we take Pete's emotional courage seriously; you've never seen a drag movie this free of camp.

And this is probably necessary because, alas, it's politically timely. Back in 1995, I remember a friend of mine rolling his eyes elaborately at a poster for To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, a routine comedy distinguished (aside from its peculiar title) only because it featured Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo as drag queens traveling cross-country. My friend wondered aloud if anybody still thought drag was scandalous.

Back then, I might have thought he had a point. 1978's La Cage aux Folles and its American version The Birdcage (released the year after To Wong Foo) and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert as well the rise of RuPaul all seemed to suggest that drag had attained relatively mainstream status. But nearly three decades later, reactionaries in parts of this country have picked drag, of all freaking things, as a target for ginned-up phony social and political outrage, and it appears that we'll all have to stick up for drag queens after all.

Similarly, back in the '90s I might have wondered if the sneering mockery and professional injustice that we see Pete subjected to in Makeup when his avocation is revealed was exaggerated and melodramatic. In these retrograde times, it seems all too plausible.

HORNIER THAN THOU

Playing this week at Filmbar Phoenix:

Horns—Taken for granted as guilty in the murder of his adored girlfriend, young Ig Perrish wakes up one morning to find a pair of the title appendages growing out of his forehead. They have, in addition to a rather elegant, backward-curving look, a startling effect on the people Ig encounters around the Pacific Northwest lumber town where he lives, and is seen as a pariah—without invitation, they disclose to him their baser inner thoughts.

This is the set-up for this film version of the 2010 novel by Joe Hill (the son, as he is probably sick of reviewers pointing out, of Stephen King), directed by Alexandre Aja from a script by Keith Bunin. Ig (Daniel Radcliffe) decides to use his newfound ability to elicit candor to figure out who really killed his beloved. The killer isn’t that difficult to guess—I know this because I correctly guessed who it was—but there are nonetheless intriguing layers to the mystery, and the central premise, Ig’s plight and his response to it, is fascinating and amusingly handled.

The climax is a disappointingly standard gory grapple, and though he’s sympathetic as usual, Radcliffe’s performance here doesn’t get very far past haunted earnestness. But the film is still witty and well worth seeing.

RIP to the brilliant Mike Nichols, passed on suddenly this week at 83. Nichols is remembered for his early-‘60s sketch-comedy partnership with Elaine May, but he amassed a really diverse and lively collection of credits as a movie director, starting spectacularly with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate and Catch-22 and Carnal Knowledge, through ‘80s notables like Silkwood and Working Girl, through enjoyable later works like Primary Colors and The Birdcage and his underrated swansong Charlie Wilson’s War. For all his bright, snappy wit, he tended to serve the material rather than impose his personality on it, and while not all of his movies were great or even good, a bunch of them will endure.

ROBIN'S BEST

Like everyone else, I was shocked and saddened by the death of Robin Williams, apparently by his own hand after a lifelong struggle with depression and addiction. I’m a big fan, but his signature hits—Dead Poets Society, Good Will Hunting, Mrs. Doubtfire, Good Morning, Vietnam—aren’t, on the whole, my favorites. Some of what I think is his best, funniest, least sentimental, most ebullient work was in films that were ignored by audiences and panned by critics.

Below are some examples of the underrated or neglected “other” Robin Williams, which I would encourage you to give another look.

The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen—In his brief role as The King of the Moon, whose head and body are disconnected, in Terry Gilliam’s uneven but fascinating 1989 fantasy, Williams may have taken his fast talking, haywire routine as far as he ever did; he was like Mork squared, or like a live-action version of the Genie in Aladdin. This is one of several films on which Williams worked under a pseudonym—Bob Goldthwait’s notorious Shakes the Clown was another. Under his own name, Williams later gave an immensely touching performance in Gilliam’s The Fisher King.

Hamlet—Williams was just right for the foppish, fawning courtier Osric in Kenneth Branagh’s full-text version of Shakespeare’s masterpiece. Pity he didn’t get to do more Shakespeare. He was also terrific in a funny, quietly intense turn as the psychiatrist in Branagh’s Dead Again.

One Hour Photo—Mark Romanek’s odd little thriller about a lonely, alienated snapshot developer who becomes fixated on a seemingly picture-perfect family of customers is sad, unsavory and ultimately unsatisfying. But Williams brings so much gravity and pathos to the part that it’s essential viewing.

The Birdcage—This hilarious and sweet American version of La Cage aux Folles was a hit, certainly, but much of the attention went, rightly, to Nathan Lane as Albert, the maternal drag queen. It’s possible that the quieter excellence of Williams as the father posing as straight for his conservative future in-laws was a little overlooked. His scene with Lane on a bench, while a ship passes behind them, is one of the best he ever played.

Being Human—Bill Forsythe’s reincarnation drama, in which Williams played five people—or rather, the same person in five different lifetimes—doesn’t quite add up, but Williams is great in all five. As a prehistoric man in the opening segment he has a shattering moment, screaming “Mine! Mine!” as he sees his family being abducted.

Cadillac Man—Williams is a philandering, hustling car salesman who finds himself frantically trying to manage a hostage situation when jealous husband Tim Robbins brings a gun into the car dealership where he works. This 1990 comedy with dramatic overtones from director Roger Donaldson shows Williams as an irresponsible but essentially humane guy trying to stave off disaster.

Moscow on the Hudson—Williams plays a Soviet circus musician who defects in the middle of Bloomingdale’s in New York in Paul Mazursky’s comedy-drama. This performance was one of the first to demonstrate his remarkable range.

Popeye—Williams is buried in the title character’s persona in Robert Altman’s live-action version of the cartoon. But he gives amusing, stoic line readings, and his warmth and sweetness shine through the makeup.

The Survivors—Michael Ritchie’s satire of survivalists and gun nuts was poorly received, but its picture of the sort of chaotic modern life that breeds such reactionaries is mercilessly funny and original—it starts with Williams getting fired from his job by a parrot. Williams was rarely as precise in his manic style as he is here, and he seems all the crazier with Walter Matthau as his straight man.

The Best of Times—This football comedy, directed by Roger Spottiswoode from a script by Ron Shelton, is my favorite Robin Williams movie, but it doesn’t seem to be anybody else’s. It’s about a group of middle-aged men who get bamboozled into replaying a high school football game in Taft, California, by the bank manager (Williams) who dropped what would have been the game-winning pass back when. Williams is at his very best here. He never seems to be self-consciously playing the sad clown—something that, for all his great talent, he was quite capable of doing—and thus he’s truly lovable and poignant. And, of course, magnificently funny.