A Film a Week - Between Worlds

A piece of journalist wisdom says that the news is not when a dog bites a man, but when a man bites a dog. Put in a perspective of Nicolas Cage’s recent roles, the news would not be if he goes crazy in a movie, but if he stays “normal”. Having that in mind, Between Worlds, a sophomore feature by Maria Pulera that had the world premiere at Austin Fantastic only to enter the video distribution shortly after, is no news at all: Cage goes completely bonkers in it. For the same reason, however, it is quite an enjoyable midnight flick.

Nicolas Cage stars as Joe, a simple-minded, down on his luck truck driver who is striving to be considered as a good guy. His good intention drives him to react when he sees a woman getting strangled in a man’s room of a gas station. The woman, named Julie and played by Franka Potente (whose Run Lola Run and The Bourne Trilogy fame has kinda faded), is not that thankful because her life was not really under threat, but the whole thing was a part of a ritual that, according to her beliefs, is the only thing she can do to help her daughter Billie (an up and coming star of B-horrors Penelope Mitchell) who lies in a coma after a horrific motorcycle accident.

As we learn it, the whole idea is that a soul that has left the vessel at the point of clinical death can be steered back to the body. After his screw-up, Joe feels compelled to help Julie, they perform a ritual and hook up shortly afterwards, while Billie comes back to life. However, Billie does not seem to be herself after the accident and it might not be a simple case of amnesia. She proves to be infested by a spirit of Joe’s late wife Mary who might not be a friendly one…

The script also penned by Pulera thins out somewhere around midpoint when Billie settles back home and starts making moves towards Joe. The trajectory it takes from then on is predictable, complete with a third-act twist and a couple of dead bodies in the finale. However, the idea behind it, the one that wandering souls can “squat” someone else’s body is pretty fresh, albeit its delivery through a corny and borderline racist trope of “Magic Negro” (the nurse who guides Julie through the ritual is black and speaks with a foreign accent) is unimaginative. But the interesting part is Joe’s character development done with a bit of ambiguity for which he can be stupid, psychotic, really hurt and all of the above.

Directing such script might prove to be too much of a challenge even for the same person who wrote it, but Maria Pulera goes with a flow, completely conscious that she is making a sort of silly, modestly budgeted B-movie. It shows in the terms of cheap visual effects, but it does not hurt the film. However, the score composed by Angelo Badalamenti that is always in the background lifts the overall quality of the film even though at moments it seems too similar to his work on Twin Peaks.

Nicolas Cage as the main reason to watch this interesting and potentially cult piece of trash cinema shines as Joe even before he goes off the rails, savouring the moments of pure white-trash hedonism and being kinda goofy even during the sex scenes. The final outcome might nor be on the level of Mom & Dad or Mandy, but it is worth seeing even if you are not a Nicolas Cage enthusiast. Penelope Mitchell is dangerously seductive and vamp as Billie, while Franka Potente, playing the most sane character among the trio, gets lost in the mix and comes out a bit bland. After all, it is not about them...

A Film a Week - Euthanizer / Armomurhaaja

Apparently, rural Finland is a place where a person can meet a variety of colourful characters, like a car mechanic who bears the title “of thousand vaginas”, a bunch of comically useless neo-Nazi poseurs who call themselves “The Soldiers of Finland”, but instead of fighting the non-existent immigrants, they are more interested in designing logos and stealing car tyres, a hospice nurse with the taste for erotic asphyxiation or a motorbike repair-man who moonlights as a euthanizer for the folks poor enough to go to greedy veterinarians at the clinic. The latter is the titular character of an offbeat drama-thriller directed by Teemu Nikki, self-taught filmmaker with a number of shorts, music videos, commercials, a hit series and two feature-length films behind him. It is already quite a success that there were some brave or crazy people in Finnish film institutions to make Euthanizer an Oscar candidate. Chances are slim, but, hey, who would think that Lordi could win the Eurosong contest?

Euthanizer’s “Christian name” is Veijo Haukka and he is a bit of a jerk, a 60-ish pipe-smoking loner who will give his customers a lecture about how they are the cruel ones for actually keeping animals as pets without knowing enough about their natural needs. He is played to perfection by the legendary Finnish character actor Matti Onnismaa. Veijo’s ethics might seem unorthodox, yet firm: smaller animals like cats would get a gas chamber made out of an old car, dog will get shot, even the roadkill will get a proper burial and not a single healthy animal would die of his hand.

He is less merciful with people not just because of his seemingly heartless lectures, but his general attitude towards people. He will not hesitate to give hard time to the veterinarian he finds greedy and unethical, and even to his dying father (Heikki Nousiainen), a former alcoholic now in hospice. Like some kind of a folksy philosopher, Veijo sees that everybody, his father included, should receive just the right amount of pain before they die. It might seem that he is given a chance of happiness when he meets his father’s nurse Lotta (Hannamaija Nikander) who takes an instant interest in him, but his principal character flaw and a misunderstanding of sorts will get him in trouble with an emasculated member of a nazi gang named Petri (Jari Virman) and his thug buddies…

A piece of trivial information says that Nikki has finished the principal photography of the film before even looking for funding, but it can be explained with the fact that most of his cast and crew were his collaborators on previous project, including the actors and co-producer Jani Pösö who also served as the co-writer on his two previous features Simo Times Three (2012) and Lovemilla (2015). Nikki was his own editor and together with the cinematographer Sari Aaltonen keen on handheld camerawork, he also served as the set and costume designer. The whole budget was around 300.000 € and the film has a certain B-movie appeal to it.

Speaking of that, it is worth noting that the whole B-movie thing is not a piece of hipster irony (even though there is more than enough irony, sarcasm and pitch-black humour delivered with a deadpan seriousness in the film’s text, which is kinda typical for the Finnish way of life), but an earnest effort in the likes of Monte Hellman’s films where animals, cars and vistas also have a certain role in social landscape and the “smart-ass-ery” of the protagonist can be read as a tribute to Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry which Nikki quotes as a big influence.

On the other hand, Euthanizer does not just play cool like B-movies usually do, it is cool because, of all things, its emotional core and strong sense of humaneness portrayed through the unapologetic character of Veijo (who is the only one fully developed). It might take time for him to get under our skin, but once he is there, we could follow him to the end of the world. His larger than life personality (due to Onnismaa masterful acting), together with the title, is the reason for the film to work also as an out of the box origins story to a superhero series, which, having Rendel in mind, might be a trend in Finnish genre cinema. We might just need a slightly different ending, maybe one more scene, one more shot, mid-credits or a regular one.

A Film a Week - Ron Goossens, Low Budget Stuntman

Those acquainted with the previous works by Steffen (Haars) and Flip (van der Kuil), the filmmaking duo from The Netherlands, know what to expect. Their films are technically polished, well-made, genre-oriented and all-over fun and marked with a special tongue-in-cheek, politically incorrect and taboo-breaking sense of humour which crosses a line or two, sometimes falls flat, but most of the time hits a target dead-on.

Ron Goossens, Low Budget Stuntman (2017), which had its international premiere at the Crossing Europe Film Festival in Linz, is Steffan & Flip’s fourth feature effort, after two New Kids movies Turbo (2010) and Nitro (2011) (as the follow up of the hit TV series) and Bro’s Before Ho’s (2013). It is more plot-driven than both New Kids movies and wilder in the sense of the adolescent humour than their previous films, but it gives us the unique perspective of the contemporary Dutch society. And prepare to have a blast!

The title character, played by Steffen’s brother Tim Haars, is a drunk from Zundert, once known as Van Gogh’s birthplace. Ron Goossens’ attempt to jump over the bridge in his car as a bet goes viral on YouTube, making him an instant celebrity. But his main trouble is at home: his cheating wife is about to leave him unless he proves himself worthy to her by seducing model-turned-actress Bo Maerrten (played by herself).

The only way out seems to be a job offer of a down on his luck agent Berrie (Michiel Romeyn). Not minding to get himself hurt in the process, Ron could become a low-budget stuntman, saving the struggling Dutch film industry lots of money and simultaneously getting his chance with the beautiful Bo. First steps are always hard, but whatever Ron is, he is not a quitter.

Crazy stunts, drunken jokes, shenanigans and the sheer ridiculousness of the whole idea aside, Ron Goossens, Low Budget Stuntman really works. It is not about the title character becoming a better man and a starlet proving that she has a personality behind the looks or even about trying to get out of the same old-same old loser milieu and the mentality of constant badgering and casual racial slurs out of the blue. We have seen it all before.

But what Steffen and Flip get spot-on is the modern celebrity culture consisting of YouTube overnight sensations and people famous just for being famous. All the celebrities in the film were played by the actual people who make fun of themselves. And some of the stuff, like the whole Dennie Christian schlager-singer comeback, is simply great. Also, the films within the films are a brilliant, eye-stabbing provocation, dealing with the actual affairs, pedophile scandals and terrorist attacks that shocked the Dutch society.

Yes, the low-brow comedy can be fun and it can be smart and clever, too. Steffen and Flip films are all about that. What we expect is what we get. And we can enjoy it.