Coda: Teenage Badass

Tuesday, August 17

2021 PFF & IHSFF Festival Recap – Monday, August 16th

Coda’s ongoing coverage of the 2021 Phoenix Film Festival & International Horror Sci-Fi Film Festival. I'll be using these posts to recap the films I've experienced as part of these festivals.

By Emery Snyder - @leeroy711

SURGE – Directed by Aneil Karia

SURGE takes place over a 24-hour period in London when Joseph (Ben Wishaw), a British Airport Security officer takes the audience through the journey of his breakdown and attempt at self-liberation.

I came here for a great Wishaw performance and was treated to exactly that. The film begins with Joseph on the brink of mental collapse. His portrayal of this descent was perfect. Sometimes, great acting comes from the smallest things. Little quirks of the mouth can flesh out a character. Tiny eyebrow movements can give an audience a glimpse into emotional reactions and feelings. Sometimes however, as is the case here, a role calls for more animation and physicality. This is tough because the need for restraint is still present. Without restraint, you risk the disrespect of turning a mental affliction into a cartoon character. I was quite pleased to see that this didn’t happen here.

Impressively, we spend every moment of this film’s runtime with Joseph, up close and personal, shot entirely hand-held. There is no escaping what he’s going through. There are no breathers. At times I got a pretty heavy Travis Bickle vibe from him. But at least Scorsese had the decency to turn away in disgust a few times. This film is uncomfortable by design.

If you can handle this type of a depiction, I highly recommend checking this one out. I won’t likely see a better performance at the festival this year.

Additional Screenings: Wednesday, August 18^th @ 10:10 PM & Thursday, August 19^th @ 9:20 PM

WHEN I’M DONE DYING – Directed by Nisan Dag

Fehmi (Oktay Çubuk) is an aspiring young rapper from the slums of Istanbul but he can’t seem to kick his addiction to the cheap street drug, bonzai. His path to stardom is paved by his relationship with Devin (Hayal Köseoglu), an upper class DJ who’s love his motivation to try to get clean.

I can’t say anything too negative about this film. It is quite well composed as a whole. The acting is phenomenal, the music is great and it is just an overall well told story. I particularly liked the touch of animated sequences sprinkled in throughout. They actually looked like what someone in the throes of a drug-induced haze may be experiencing in the graffiti illustrated streets of his neighborhood.

This film deals with a lot of different themes. Archaic drug laws, homophobia, the classism associated with different addictions and the struggles to make art when you are broke all get a mouthpiece at times here. But the overarching weight of this story is felt simply by the addiction aspect itself. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s just a story we’ve seen cinematically quite a few times.

I don’t want to do that thing where I review the film that I wanted it to be instead of what it is because this movie is quite an impressive accomplishment for a host of aforementioned reasons. Rap is the poetry of poverty and struggle and I guess I was wishing to see more redemption and self-discovery from the music angle. I was just hoping for Turkish 8-MILE; this is more like Turkish A STAR IS BORN.

Additional Screenings: Wednesday, August 18^th @ 2:25 PM

THE BETA TEST – Directed by Jim Cummings & PJ McCabe

Jordan (Cummings), an engaged Hollywood agent receives an invitation to an anonymous sexual encounter that leads him down a rabbit hole of infidelity, dishonesty and awkward hilarity.

This was the festival film I was most excited for this year. I’ve kind of been stanning Jim Cummings since his amazing work on 2018’s THUNDER ROAD. I’ve never seen anyone pull off awkwardness like this before and he continues to nail it. The combination of gracelessness and volume is not something you typically see in a film’s emotional peak soliloquy. Cummings does this multiple times and I’m always going to be here for it. At this point, I wish he was writing dialogue for at least one character in pretty much every film and television show. If there were an Oscar specifically for awkward ranting monologues, Cummings would already be receiving his lifetime achievement award.

If comedy is tragedy plus time, what happens when you also add depth and detail? Well… this is what happens. I’m being intentionally opaque. I didn’t really know anything about the story when I went into it and I’m grateful for that. The plot is twisty and swervy and the third act reveals are an absolute delight. I hope this film gets legs upon release. I’ll likely be still talking about it for years to come.

THE BETA TEST opens wide, November 5^th, 2021.

Monday, August 16

2021 PFF & IHSFF Festival Recap – Sunday, August 15th

By Emery Snyder - @leeroy711

TEENAGE BADASS – Directed by Grant McCord

This is the story of Stylo and the Murder Dogs, a Tempe local band led by Kirk Stylo (Evan Ultra). The film treats us to a look at the quest for stardom as a band in spite of Stylo’s megalomaniacal eccentricities and drug abuse. The film is set in 2006 and was shot in the Phoenix/Tempe area.

This one has a lot going for it. In a lot of ways, it feels like a love letter to the area. It’s written, produced and directed by one of its ensemble stars, Grant McCord and the film’s music was written by Ultra. You can feel the locality here. As someone that’s spent the past four decades in this Valley, I loved things like Welcome Diner and Zia Records. They play their first set at The Rebel Lounge. When I was younger, it was called The Mason Jar but it’s no less iconic today. One of the characters is perpetually wearing a Dirty Drummer t-shirt. My uncle used to take me there for chicken wings about thirty years ago. Even Jimmy Eats World’s Jimmy Atkins’s cameo feels more like scenery than anything else. To be clear, I was here for all of this. As a cinefile that grew up in an area that hasn’t always been that friendly to its local art scene, it was wonderful to see a legit feature film that expressed some of the love I’ve always felt for my home. From my experience, this story almost perfectly epitomized the local rock band scene. Of course, I’ve never heard of an overabundance of drummers in this scene. I think the it’s more typical to find about a 4 to 1 ratio of Tempe bands to Tempe drummers.

All of this is great, but the real star of the film is the screenplay. Co-written by McCord and Matthew Dho, the jokes hit on every beat. The audience I was with was laughing out loud and so was I. This was the film’s most successful aspect and I hope to get the opportunity to revisit it.

TEENAGE BADASS is available for digital purchase and rental from Freestyle Digital Media.

FALLING FOR FIGARO – Directed by Ben Lewin

Millie (Danielle Macdonald) is a rising young star in her career as a fund manager when she decides to give it all up to become an opera singer. She moves into a small village in the Scottish Highlands to study under the tutelage of former star, Meghan Geoffrey-Bishop (Joanna Lumley) where she meets Meghan’s only other pupil, Max, (Hugh Skinner). Eyes meet, sparks fly, but is this the path that’s right for Millie?

I know nothing of the opera. Honestly, it’s an art form that will likely never interest me. I came here to see the progression of Danielle Macdonald’s career. I’ve been interested in her since 2017’s PATTI CAKES in which she plays an aspiring New Jersey rapper, an art form that I can fully support. Her performance here was good, maybe great, but it’s hard to critique considering what she was working with. At times, throughout the second act, it seemed as though the film was working its way towards fully developed and interesting characters. But it ultimately fell short, even with Millie. Other than, she loves opera, I never got a sense of why she was so driven to change her life. The same issue arises, even more apparently with the supporting characters.

The scenery of the film was shot beautifully, although with that setting, I’m not sure how it wouldn’t have. And I found most of the dialogue to be well written. But for a romantic comedy, it was very short on actual laughs. I would also add that I found it to be quite unfortunate that the screenplay felt it necessary to revert back to some old and predictable rom-com tropes that didn’t seem to be supported at all by the characters we had been spending this time with. I found this to be cheap and very disappointing.

Sometimes a movie can appeal to a niche audience when it takes place in a world of a certain subject matter. I don’t know, maybe the opera-heads will love this one. It just wasn’t for me.

FALLING FOR FIGARO opens wide, Friday, October 1^st