Special Report - FINAL CUT: LADIES & GENTLEMAN (2012)

There are some ideas for movies that everybody has but are never realized - one that's been kicking around my head for years is to make a movie entirely from clips of other movies, building a rudimentary plot from tiny excerpts strung together.  While I conceived it as a psychological thriller, I'm overwhelmingly happy to say that a movie has emerged that is exactly that but is a love story rather than a thriller.  The film is called Final Cut: Ladies & Gentlemen, and it is a "film for educational purposes" (as well as a "recycled film") created by Hungarian director György Pálfi and a team of four editors who created a basic, but moving, love story out of clips from some 450 movies (mostly American and Hungarian).  The idea of making a short film by this method is mind-blowing enough, but Pálfi and company managed to make an 85 minute feature with a comprehensible plot.  After three years of work and several versions, the latest version is receiving a limited theatrical release in the U.S., and I was lucky enough to see it at SIFF Cinema Uptown in Seattle tonight with an overjoyed crowd.

The story is as old as time itself - boy meets girl.  After the opening credits form an image of a man and a woman kissing out of names of famous filmmakers and actors (as well as the ampersand in the subtitle), we follow a series of clips as a man wakes up in the morning, goes out to work and bumps into a woman, and sparks fly immediately.  Along the way they will see conflict, separation, despair and a miraculous renewal, and not a second goes by without some kind of tangible joy exuding from the screen.  The clips range from half a second to 10 or more, and the sources cover practically every famous movie you can think of off the top of your head from The Great Train Robbery to Avatar.  I recognized quite a few movies but a lot of them I didn't, such as all of the Hungarian ones and a lot of Far Eastern movies.  The trick isn't so much that you recognize the source film, but how seamlessly the clips flow together, such as somebody walking through a room shifting perfectly to somebody walking in the same direction towards a phone, or a woman in a 50's kitchen about to touch a pot of something shifting to a clip from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves showing the resolution of that action.  It's because of this meticulous action matching that we are able to follow the plot, and the plot is simple enough that the film doesn't disintegrate into a bad music video.  

While much of the sequencing is empirical and smooth, some of the superimpositions are surprisingly funny.  For example, at one point the woman is at a hospital being shown her baby as an embryo inside of her, and the movie cuts to a shot of the Star Child from 2001.  A set of shots meant to be the same character can suddenly switch to a strikingly different person, and Yoda is used a few times like this to hilarious effect.  The audience, as well as me, was delighted every time a shot of The Addams Family was used, and it's a reminder of just how funny that movie was.  The director restricted himself to using no more than two movies per director, and you can tell what his favorite directors are by the frequent use of clips from Tim Burton (Sleepy Hollow and Beetlejuice; a LOT of clips from Sleepy Hollow), Terry Gilliam (Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) and most strikingly David Lynch, for whom he breaks the rule (Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Mulholland Dr.).  I hated every second of Wild at Heart, so much so that I had to shut it off after 15 minutes, so his inclusion of multiple clips from it is the only thing I found irritating about the movie (at least they were vaguely interesting).  He also includes some lesser-known but interesting movies, like Luc Besson's Subway (featuring Highlander's Christopher Lambert with white hair) and Tarsem Singh's The Cell (an underrated favorite of mine), and a handful of animated films (including Spirited Away, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie and Paprika*).  While some predictable filmmakers get featured, like Tarantino, he is able to not overuse them, such as Spielberg and Hitchcock, and one movie in particular, Bram Stoker's Dracula, got used quite a bit, which made me quite happy.


The audience had a blast at my screening, with a lot of laughs as certain famous movies showed their faces (the biggest one arguably with the inclusion of a shot from Species).  They also laughed a lot at an extended sex scene around the 1/3 mark, which includes a few highly explicit shots (like some cunnilingus and an erect, gold-painted penis).  These shots prompted the theater to put up a warning sign on the front door, saying the movie was an "unrated, European film" (a descriptor I find really funny as well as apt, considering how much more laid-back Europe is about sexual content in movies).  There's also some violent content in a fight scene in the first half of the movie, but nothing too graphic.  Teenagers would get a kick out of the movie, and in a better world (or Europe) they'd be able to see it just as easily as adults.  And honestly, everybody should see it.  

I can't remember the last time I had a more astonishing and entertaining theatrical experience as Final Cut, and considering the multitude of possible copyright issues the film could encourage you may never be able to see it again (without some trickery, anyways).  If you live in the Seattle area you can see it at the SIFF Cinema Uptown (down the road from Seattle Center), but hurry, as they're only showing it nine times and two of those have already passed.  Do yourselves a favor: check out the showtimes here and get your butt downtown to see the thing - you may never get another chance and it's more than worth the price of the ticket.  It also comes with Precious Images, a 1986 short film that won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short that year and was made for the 50th anniversary of the Directors Guild of America.  It too is cobbled together from hundreds of movie clips, but has no plot and is much shorter.  It's somewhat cheesier than Final Cut but it's pretty fun and a poignant homage to great film.  Whatever you're doing tomorrow, forget it - go to the 5:00 or 7:00 showings of Final Cut and have the time of your life.  It's the film experience of a lifetime, and you shouldn't let it pass you by.  The clip below doesn't even begin to sum up how great it is.

~PNK

*I'm a huge fan of anime director Satoshi Kon, the mad genius behind Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers and Paranoia Agent, but I'm really not a fan of Paprika, which unfortunately appears to be his most popular movie right now (and his untimely death at 47 means that it'll probably stay that way).  The movie is everything that anime's detractors dislike about the industry, and all of his other work does a great job of avoiding those qualities.  Unfortunately, those qualities are more profitable than the stuff I like from his other projects, and that's probably why the movie made it to Hungary in the first place.  Do see those other movies, by the way - really, really awesome stuff.

A Roaring Short-Order - LIONPOWER FROM MGM (1967)

You come up to a ramshackle treehouse with a rope ladder.  As you ascend the ladder, you notice a sign on the door:  "FANZ OF THE 60S ONLEE - ALL OTHERS R POOPOO HEADS!!!".  If you're not game for a blast of late-60's nostalgia, turn back now.  For those of you still left, come on in - the Cinerama is warm tonight.

Lionpower from MGM is an unusual entry for this blog - it's a 27-minute promotional reel of MGM's 1967-68 season, only shown to distributors and exhibitors.  I saw it as a filler short on TCM the other night and it blew me away, and I watched it again tonight with and equally wide grin fixed on my face.  I've always had a soft spot for late-60's movies ever since I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, and this is one of the best payloads of late-60's Hollywood hooey I've ever seen.  The studio system was falling into a state of crisis, as the introduction of the ratings system, the growing counterculture, and the phasing out of short subjects were all radical changes to how movies were made and marketed.  One of the treats with these kinds of promotional reels is how well its content has dated, and this particular selection of films is heavily conflicted, at once readying for the future and clinging desperately to old models - and man is it a hoot.

The lineup is split into five seasons: the usual four of Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer, and a fifth "season" of roadshow movies, meaning they got a limited big-city release before a wide release and required reservations (a practice phased out in the 70's).  It's narrated with glorious cheesiness by Karl Weber (Search for Tomorrow, Perry Mason) and initially set to music from the 1950 movie The Magnificent Yankee, fixing MGM's grasp of promotion squarely in the past.  He boasts the most "creative filmmakers" and the "biggest stars", and doesn't lie in either claim - not only are directors like John Frankenheimer and Stanley Kubrick in the roster, nearly every movie has a huge, blockbuster star at the helm, some of them baffling in their combinations (two in particular I won't dare spoil, but be forewarned that David Niven and Raquel Welch are embarrassing themselves).  This short also makes for a fine drinking game, wherein the viewer takes a shot for every movie they've actually seen - the majority of them have fallen into obscurity, with a few popping up in the recent wave of big-studio on-demand DVD-R releasing catalogs (and a couple of those may show up on this blog in good time).  

The transitions from film to film are hysterical, such as the transition from Fall's Point Blank (a stylish thriller starring Lee Marvin) to Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Your Teeth are in My Neck: "From murder...to madness...and biting comedy at its best!"  A George Hamilton heist flick, Jack of Diamonds (never released to video, more common than you'd think in this lineup) has the narrator stating, "Excitement is another breed of cat - a cat burglar who dares danger at every height!"  Another fall movie, Our Mother's House, is another never-on-video movie that I've been seeking for ages, and if you know where I can find it I'd give you 12 million Mickey Mouse monies for the privilege.  Fall tops off with the bloated-looking Sophia Loren/Omar Sharif historical romance More than a Miracle, and then Winter "surges ahead on Lionpower!".  Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton headline - "People...politics....passion...in heat...in Haiti...in Graham Greene's The Comedians!"  David MacCallum fires guns in the go-go-riffic Sol Madrid (which I've got to see, but is not on video, much to the dismay (or is it relief?) of fellow stars Rip Torn and Telly Savalas).  Dark of the Sun is the serious-sounding filling to an unbelievable dud sandwich of The Biggest Bundle of Them All (whose VHS is available for the low, low price of $84.99 on Amazon) and The Extraordinary Seaman (mercifully never released to video), both of whose segments must be seen to be believed.  Also MIA for the home market is another go-go inflected thriller, A Man Called Dagger, and the Charles Bronson co-starring-western Guns for San Sebastian has a VHS for the comparatively modest price of $47.96 when compared to the aforementioned Bundle.  

"Lionpower springs into Spring", and I'll bet that most of you forgot that Hermans' Hermits even had a movie, much less that it had the portentious title Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter.  If your eyes recover, the mysterious force of The Power, another George Hamilton flick but seemingly much better than Jack of Diamonds, will knock them right out (or turn them upside down, or whatever happened to that one guy strapped in the g-force chair...).  Once Lionpower "roars into summer" the viewer is subjected to an Elvis movie, Speedway, here paired with the comparatively poor singing voice of Nancy Sinatra in a year when these movies should have been dead for a long time.  Surprisingly, the Richard Burton-helmed Where Eagles Dare doesn't even have footage ready, and the spot is illustrated through delightfully cheesy "animation".

However, it's not nearly as cheesy as Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?, with Doris Day heading up an embarrassed cast trapped in a chintzy living room and stock sex komedy krap.  Ice Station Zebra is another big hit in the lineup, but beforehand we get a glimpse of the Sunset Boulevard-esque psychological drama The Legend of Lylah Clare.  Now come the two Roadshow pictures, both well-known now: Far from the Madding Crowd, which gets the longest segment of them all, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, which the narrator doesn't elaborate upon in terms of plot or stars.  Instead, all we see is one of Douglas Trumbull's slit-screen effects and some stars while Karl Weber talks about "all the stars of the solar system".

The most curious portion is a parade of cartoon teasers for movies yet to be produced, done in the same minimalist 60's style of the Where Eagles Dare bit, as nothing had been shot yet.  Some of them are remembered fondly, such as The Shoes of the Fisherman, Goodbye, Mr. Chips and The Phantom Tollbooth (not released until 1970 and done in a completely different art style from the one in the bit).

Some others are less well-known, such as The Fixer from the novel by Bernard Malamud, Tai-Pan (not released until 1986), James Michener's Caravans, released ten years later by a different studio, and The Appointment, an apparently terrible Sidney Lumet movie that features the funniest piece of animation:

The most unusual are a trio of movie that were never made, two of them: Cornelius Ryan's WWII history The Last Battle, James Eastwood's totally forgotten mystery The Chinese Visitor, and The Tower of Babel, a Middle East-set political thriller to be directed by Peter Glenville (whose last film turned out to be The Comedians).  Announcements rise and fall all the time, but it's odd to see promotion for movies that never came to be, and it's impossible to tell if those would have been any good.

Whatever your tastes, the short is a ton of fun, and most of the films will be new on you unless you're a near-masochistic freak for 60's pop culture.  If you've got TCM they may play it again as an interstitial, but I have no idea how often they do it.  It's the exact kind of thing that'll never get a video release, so don't hesitate if you get the chance to see it in high quality.  For those of you who don't care about clarity of picture, here's a generous YouTube upload, which is where I got all those screencaps.  I guarantee you'll laugh, cry, or puke no matter which movie you're rooting for.

~PNK

The Voice in the Pendulum in the Wall: THE NINTH GUEST (1934)

If there's one genre the 20's and 30's couldn't get enough of it was the "Old Dark House" thriller: a group of varied Mrs. Odds and Mr. Ends trapped in a spooky mansion with danger lurking in shadows and secret doorways, but not too dangerous to keep the audience from laughing.  These were often based on popular stage plays, the most notable example being The Cat and The Canary, which was remade a number of times after it's successful 1927 adaptation starring Laura La Plante.  Though I think the most interesting entry in the genre (that I've seen) is James Whale's The Old Dark House, which turns the ODH conventions on their head and maintains a quirkily dark sense of humor, The Ninth Guest isn't too shabby by comparison.  Based on a best-selling novel, The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow, and made by studio workhorses with studio casting, The Ninth Guest...actually, let's take a look at that novel for just a seco-WHOA!

Ho-Lee-Krap, is that an awesome cover.  Actually, I think the novel does a much better job of setting the mood for the film than the it's poster, as it covers the main elements: terror among modern style and technology, rather than swooners at midnight (though the clock is a part of things).  Let's get the party started.

A flurry of telegrams are sent to eight people, all wealthy, powerful figures in business, academia, and high society.  Each is an invitation to a party in their honor, each telegram saying that the receiver is the sole celebree, as if the guests wouldn't be bothered with a party unless they were the main event.  Though the host is unknown, they all gather at a Penthouse apartment out of curiosity, and possibly out of their interlocked past.  The Penthouse is not only up to the minute in Deco decor, it's quite high tech, with an electric iron gate, a timeclock in the kitchen, and an embedded wall clock, it's pendulum a rod seen only through a curved slit a few feet below the hands.  Movies from this era often used lavish homes as settings, using a fantasy of the super wealthy as an escape from the Great Depression, though I'm not sure why anybody would aspire to be any of the guests at this particular function.  One guest appears in an encrusted dress that glitters like a disco ball, but her efforts to impress may have been wasted; everyone attending burns a loathing torch for each other, enemies made by years of competition and treachery.

No one is certain why they're there; if they can't stand one another why assemble them for drinks?  The butler, his bumbling assistant, and the chef have all been given specific instructions and monitor the progress of the evening with some fear.  As soon as a few guests attempt to leave, the first fright occurs: the radio starts talking to them, under the moniker WITS.  The eight have been gathered to play a game, "a game of death."  The phone lines have been cut, and the front gate has been electrified.  The voice claims to be someone they all know; he also knows their secrets and weaknesses.  For those who don't want to play, the voice offers a bottle of poison on the mantle.  It also claims that before 11:00, the most reprehensible of them will die.  It tells them to use a provided key to look behind a nearby door; they find a corpse and electrician's tape.  Glitter girl makes a break for the gate and is stopped before reaching it, but a vase falls against it and shoots sparks all around (quite odd for ceramic, really).  They take the staff hostage and split up, offering a montage of shadows, doorknobs, feet on stairs, and illuminating light fixtures, a fine piece of direction.

One man, a businessman whose desk was surrounded by chic lamps and stock charts, strays back into the living room and tries to speak with the radio, offering $50,000 for his life (as he thinks himself the worst of the lot, and it's already ten to 11).  We get an interesting shot from inside the radio, and his face is one of genuine worry.  The radio doesn't have to answer him, though; he pours everybody drinks, each one possibly spiked with the poison.  The radio announces that his death is part of the plan, and that they have met the ninth guest: Death.  He didn't even have to drink to die; he merely cut his finger on the poisoned bottle cap.  With one death down the hatch, our host announces that they are to play with two sides: them on one and him on the other, "with Death as the referee."


I don't want to spoil the rest for you, because the ride is pretty suspenseful, holding up remarkably well after 80 years.  Unlike a lot of thrillers of this era, The Ninth Guest is almost totally devoid of comic relief*.  Even though we know next to nothing about the victims the actors know who they are, each character offering enough contrast from one another to create a crackling, tense dynamic (much like the cast of John Carpenter's The Thing).  What drives each of them is their secret crime, and they are all interesting and shameful; the voice says of a society woman who offs herself via cocktail, "She is unworthy of her company."  The "game" is a relentless, measured act of high revenge, and the terror comes not only from the threat of death but also the threat of being exposed.  Image is so important to these upper crust leeches that living with the truth is worse than death.  And it's interesting for the viewers to find themselves siding with characters they would cross the street to avoid in real life.  Each of the deaths is taken seriously, and the various snuffs thuds in the viewer's psyche.  One of my favorites is a character who gets shot in the dark: when light returns the camera tracks in on his frozen face, only backing away when he slumps to the floor.  For a movie that thinks little of its subjects it certainly knows how to make the viewer cringe at their passing.

I said before that The Ninth Guest was the work of studio workhorses, and that's not untrue, but they've done some really terrific work in embellishing this thriller for the screen.  The Penthouse set is spectacular, with a heap of shadows playing off an engaging and sneaky floor plan.  In addition to a disembodied hand made of marble, there are a number of masks on the walls, and the sliding front door has a gargoyle-like visage across it, reminiscent of a mandala in its complexity.  At one point the ceiling lights in the living room go out and we see that the clock and its pendulum are backlit, the pendulum slit an ominous smile.  Guest has a real fascination with its hidden technology, and the movie even opens with a montage of the telegram system (featuring women wearing clip-on phone transmitters).  Much in the fashion of early sound films there is no background music aside from the opening and closing credits, which adds considerably to the film's palpable dread.  The camera work is fluid and observant, with a lot of deft tracking and some interesting tricks that hint at the host's presence without giving it away.  I know this kind of cinematography is par for the course in 30's movies, but it really works in Guest's favor.


And once all is revealed, the finale is really pretty tragic.  However, the downer ending is met by peppy end credits music, a funny quirk of these movies (like Island of Lost Souls, chasing burning rubble with a theme that could fit a Three Stooges short).  That said, The Ninth Guest is a fast-moving, suspenseful thriller that got a lot of work put into it for standard studio fare, holding up to this day.  It's only 65 minutes long and in public domain, so you should just go ahead and download the sucker: http://archive.org/details/TheNinthGuest


~PNK

*One of the most painful elements in genre movies from this period is annoying comic relief, and if you think characters like Jar Jar Binks are irritating you haven't even BEGUN to see annoyance.  One of the most exciting and creative Old Dark House movies is The Bat Whispers, shot in an experimental widescreen format and featuring some of the most breathtaking camera work I've seen in an old movie.  Unfortunately the film is saddled with the most horrible, screeching Irish maid stereotype I've ever seen, and she gets about 40 minutes of ear-raping screen time.  Even Dracula had two comic relief staff members at the loony bin, and the rediscovered Karloff movie The Ghoul had one, too.  I really wanted to love The Bat Whispers but that maid ruined it.  Jeesh.

Reading Between the Crumbs: ZERO EFFECT (1998)

At first, all we know of Private Investigator Daryl Zero (Bill Pullman) is a quiet yet legendary figure.  He never meets or directly speaks with his clients, and his fee is non-negotiable.  All business is made through his secretary Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller), who in his dealings with the film’s main client Gregory Stark (Ryan O’Neal) speaks with a calm and persuasive professionalism.  The agreement to help out Stark is set when Arlo describes The Case of the Man with the Mismatched Shoelaces, where Zero caught a criminal, one who held this country’s foreign relations in jeopardy, without leaving the house.  However, this last point begins Arlo’s rant to a friend at a bar, highlighting how Zero is practically a socially retarded recluse, tactless and rude, with no regard for Arlo’s feelings or well-being.  Additionally, Arlo knocks his terrible songwriting skills, apparently writing “trite and heavy handed” lyrics.  As this is intercut with the interview with Stark anticipation builds to the inevitable introduction, one which you really can’t be prepared for, even if you’ve seen Bill Pullman in action.

It’s the visit to Zero’s L.A. apartment that gives one of the most weirdly fascinating first impressions in any movie from the past 30 years.  At the top floor of the complex, there is an outer metallic door with a giant Z insignia (that opens along the diagonal in two halves), and the next door has six locks.  You’ve never seen a fridge so packed with Tab cola in your life, nor can you imagine a guitar accompaniment to a song with less rhythmic drive.  Amidst empty tuna cans and giant bags of pretzels we finally enter Zero’s room.  Donning a stained Hawaiian shirt and sweatpants, greasy worled hair and the warble much like the sound of Willie Nelson’s death rattle, Pullman delivers what is easily his best performance.  A warped cocktail of tics, smirks and bad manners, Pullman as Zero comes across as an oderous jerk while still knowing everything about Stark after hearing the name once, and knowing exactly which flight to book and when Arlo needs to drive him to the airport.  This last part, a recurring theme in the film, is part of Zero’s disregard for Arlo’s personal life, specifically his relationship with his girlfriend Jess (Angela Featherstone).

The case presented to Zero seems normal enough.  For some time now, Stark has been the victim of blackmail, already delivering seven $100,000 payments to an unknown contact.  He also believes that the recent loss of his safety deposit box key, which he had attached to his house and car keys, is part of the scheme, knowing that the box contains sensitive materials.  Zero flies out to observe Stark in his natural environment, a local gym in Portland, Or., as Nick Carmine, one of his many false identities (He has a stash of fake I.D.’s, each one with an increasingly goofy photo).  From two short meetings, one on a treadmill and one in the bathroom, he intuits an unbelievable amount of information regarding Stark’s character and the nature of the blackmail through extremely subtle clues.  He also correctly guesses that a woman behind him in line to get a massage is a paramedic without her letting it on; he refuses to explain why.  He meets up again with Arlo at the airport, speaking via payphone while he sits three payphones away in a fake beard.  After relaying info he tells Arlo he needs to fly back to L.A. that night to get stuff out of his computer, baffling Arlo as to why he was forced to come out here in the first place; Zero claims that it wasn’t worth risking a long-distance call because “they’re listening.”

A simple rhythm is set up, as the main action is cross-cut with Zero penning a memoir about his craft, the art of not only finding the trail of crumbs but “reading between the crumbs.”  First-time writer-director Jake Kasdan, son of the famous Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill, Grand Canyon), keeps a silken, relaxed feel throughout, and so his technique here of telling the story of the case alternately through the action and Zero’s use of it as references to his theories of detecting is never jarring or awkward.  Everything about this film radiates a calm, sympathetic amusement with its characters and story, avoiding the very thought of turning into a thriller and simply content with sitting back with a cup of coffee and seeing where the case leads itself.  Zero’s memoir mirrors the smoothly detached tone of the film; as an example, I’ll quote the narration during a scene where Zero snoops through Stark’s office:

“Now: a few words on looking for things.  When you go looking for something specific, your chances of finding it are very bad, because of all things in the world, you’re only looking for one of them.  When you go looking for anything at all, you’re chances of finding it are very good, because of all the things in the world, you’re sure to find some of them.  And the most important rule: often the thing you’re looking for is right in front of your nose.”

Oddly enough in this detective film, Zero finds the blackmailer fairly early.  It turns out to be the woman he correctly guessed to be a paramedic, as he sees her pick up the money, hiding it in her equipment bag.  Also oddly, Zero refuses to end the case once he knows who the blackmailer is; he wants to know what her “deal” is.  For a man who is strikingly skilled at reading people (even before he meets them), he can’t quite crack her code, and it’s also convenient that she has asked him to do her taxes, buying into his earlier cover story of being an accountant.  Naturally, but also with some welcome twists, this leads to a romantic subplot, with Zero’s emotional involvement with an obvious criminal messing with his usual detachment, and his willingness to turn her name over to Stark.

It’s at this point that we can see the film for what it is, which is a collection of character studies wrapped up in a deft mystery.  I guess that most audiences got turned off when they realized that the film wasn’t a crime thriller, with lots of gunfire and car chases, but I was actually relieved that these lovely, complex characters weren’t going to be jammed into some kind of awkward Connection of the French persuasion.  Rather, the characters are left to feel their way through their situations, Zero with his detecting subject, named Gloria (Kim Dickens), and Gloria alternately trying to figure out Zero, Arlo with his relationships to Zero and Jess, and Stark with his constant need to get rid of his blackmail problem as quickly as possible, and with a certain disregard for human life.

I’ll apologize in advance, because talking much more about the plot would be a serious mistake, as the unfolding of the mystery is highly enjoyable and full of refreshing surprises.  Regardless, I can reveal a few interesting moments to get your appetites going, such as a scene where Stark tries to enter Zero’s hotel room to find out the identity of the blackmailer, and Arlo stops him by saying he will kill him if he tries to enter (“I have a gun, and everything.”).  The argument he has with Zero before that scene involves a great line: “There aren’t any evil guys, or…innocent guys…there’s just…a bunch of guys.”  Also, as it turns out, Stark’s safety deposit box key was just jammed in between the cushions of the couch in Stark’s office all along.

But you don’t want plot spoilers, do you?  You want to know the real shining star of the film’s finer qualities, don’t you?  That, my friends, is the acting, and the subtle character development that is driven by the acting (and Kasdan’s wise and sympathetic script, of course).  Obviously, the film is a showcase for Bill Pullman, who is easily one of the most underrated actors of the last 20 years.  Under his phony accountant identity he comes across as a man painfully constraining himself in order to appear boring (with interesting results).  As full-blown Zero, however, he dominates every scene he’s in, probing and bemused, angry and overblown.  His nervous, socially oblivious nature make his interactions with Arlo riveting, not only because of how loud and intense his actions are, but because Pullman is able to somehow mix real subtlety into his outbursts, and pull the reigns back at exactly the point when the character needs it most.

As for Stiller, he’s perfectly cast as the professional yet frustrated Arlo.  His character is naturally more underplayed than Zero, but it’s a good display of Stiller’s ability to wear the exact right expression that elicits real emotion without really working at it.  His character’s relationship with Stark is of particular interest in the movie, as Stark’s increasingly poor moral image creates a focal point for Arlo’s request to retire from Zero’s employ.  O’Neal, long considered to be a very uncharismatic actor, is also perfectly cast, a worried scumbag attempting to buy his way out of a truly awful crime of his past.  A surprising find for this film is Kim Dickens as Gloria, a confident and worldly presence for an unconventional love interest.  As Gloria Dickens is understanding without being sweet, athletic and sexually unassuming, and very easy to like without asserting her presence.  She’s also one of those people who can make you feel welcome without ever smiling, which isn’t as common in films as I would like.

As for the production, it’s just about the least assertive production I’ve seen in a mystery in a while.  Nobody involved had any belief that this was a neo-noir (except for Zero, perhaps), and so, for once, we get an excellent mystery film in broad daylight (though there are rainclouds near the end of the film, considering that it mostly takes place in Oregon).  The music is extraordinarily nice for a crime film, only periodically calling upon the old noir staple of Harlem Nocturne-esque sax riffs.  The only really involved set design is Zero’s apartment, especially his workdesk with its several computers Rat King-ed together by their extension cords.  And as a piece of direction, Kasdan may have believed himself to be a better man behind a typewriter than a camera, because his pace, blocking, and tone are all purely functional, almost as much as a Kevin Smith film.  This isn’t a problem, of course, as it just adds to the relaxed feel of everything.

I can safely say that Zero Effect adds Jake Kasdan’s name to the wonderful Hall of First-Time Fame, along with other stunning debut features as Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H* and Christopher Nolan’s Following (which I’ll get to in an upcoming review).  I haven’t seen Kasdan’s second feature The TV Set, a fun-looking satire on the process of getting a TV series off the ground, but what I’ve heard seems promising, and I can believe it considering the strength of this debut.  The ultimate question that this film brings up isn’t one of plot or ideas, but rather why Bill Pullman hasn’t been offered more interesting material during his career.  He’s really quite stunning in Zero Effect, as well as the Curtiss Clayton/Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) dark comedy Rick (which I’ll discuss in a later review), and deserves a second look.  I guess most people think he’s boring, but that’s more the fault of the parts he keeps getting (like the dad from the live-action Casper movie).  Bottom line, actors really work best in the roles that...well, they work best in.  This film is chock-full of that, and it makes Zero Effect worth the price of the rental.

~PNK

P.S. Apparently Kasdan attempted to make a TV series out of Daryl Zero, which would feature the cases that made Zero and Arlo a crime-cracking team.  It was set to star Alan Cumming (which would have been a very different spin on the character), and was ultimately not picked up by NBC.  Looks like it’s time for a Youtube resurrection!