1 of 7 | Alicia Silverstone and Nick Frost star in “Krazy House.” Photo courtesy of Sundance Institute
PARK CITY, Utah, Jan. 22 (UPI) — Krazy House, which screened Monday at the Sundance Film Festival, creates a gleeful sitcom nightmare. But, it crosses three lines into such bad taste it spoils the fun.
“Krazy House” was a TV sitcom airing in 1990. Bernie Christian (Nick Frost) is a devout Christian.
His wife Eva (Alicia Silverstone) is the harried breadwinner. Their kids Sarah (Gaite Jansen) and Adam (Walt Klink) rebel against Bernie’s faith.
Very quickly the sitcom shenanigans escalate into chaos that would never be feasible in 1990 television. Pratfalls include fire stunts and broken water pipes.
The sitcom keeps cutting to brief clips of blood, crucifixion and voices telling Bernie to “kill them all.” The studio audience still laughs and coos at sitcom moments.
Three Russian day laborers (Jan Bijvoet, Chris Peters, Matti Stooker) come to fix the faucet but end up demolishing the house over the next several days. The Christian kids end up falling for the two Russian brothers, Igor (Stooker) and Dmitri (Peters).
Krazy House puts evil activities in the sitcom format. Adam and Igor use Adam’s chemistry set to make crystal meth. Sarah has sex with Dmitri while Bernie and Eva watch.
All of this works because filmmakers Steffan Haars and Flip Van der Kuil stick to the tropes and formula of sitcoms. The cheesy family sitcom is the skeleton and the outrageous comedy stems from there.
The Russians are actually there to locate something in the house, a MacGuffin to be revealed later. As the violence escalates the square TV sitcom cuts to a more widescreen film.
This is a device the TV show Kevin Can F*** Himself already did. Instead of cutting to a drama, Krazy House cuts to a horror movie and it worked to a point.
Yet it still follows the format of sitcoms, adding in the home invasion genre too. The tonal blend is the movie’s strength.
Unfortunately, escalations into animal killing, infanticide and rape suggest maybe this wasn’t an intelligent tonal satire. Those three subjects are so taboo that most immature filmmakers just use them for shock value.
Movies can use animals, babies and sexual violence effectively but it’s a very delicate balance. The point of Krazy House was to see how far they could take the sitcom format and the violence, but the filmmakers should be above exploring certain taboos just to get a reaction.
Don’t try to be edgy. Be clever.
Not only does it sour the first half of the movie, but it loses any good will for the rest of the movie. It’s a lot harder to tolerate bizarre jokes after a baby dies.
The Midnight audience at Sundance expects movies to be extreme, but those who are game for outrageous violence may still find subsequent scenes distasteful.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer
Posted: July 5th, 2024 / 01:29 AM
MAXXXINE movie poster | ©2024 A24
Rating: R
Stars: Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Uli Latukefu, Giancarlo Esposito, Chloe Farnworth, Halsey, Kevin Bacon, Lily Collins, Simon Prast
Writer: Ti West
Director: Ti West
Distributor: A24
Release Date: July 5, 2024
MAXXXINE, not counting its flashbacks and flash-forwards, is set in 1985. However, it feels more like a ‘70s indie, with its mix of very tough female protagonist, soft porn (meant to be hard porn where we don’t see all the details), detective story, and horror.
It’s a completely fun blend, and star Mia Goth commits two hundred and twenty percent to everything she’s doing.
Maxine Minx (Goth), nee Miller, is a star on the XXX movie circuit in Los Angeles. She adds to her income by doing stripper gigs and peep shows. But Maxine wants to break into mainstream films. No one who saw 2022’s X, the film that introduced Goth as Maxine, will doubt her determination.
Maxine has the talent to book a lead role in a horror movie sequel, directed by hard-nosed Elizabeth Bender (Elizabeth Debicki), who will brook no tardiness or excuses from her cast.
This puts Maxine in a difficult position when her porn colleagues and friends start getting murdered in horrible ways. Marks left on their bodies suggest cult killings. Meanwhile, L.A. is being terrorized by the Night Stalker.
Maxine doesn’t want to talk to the two detectives (Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale) on the case. She wants to talk even less with a private eye from Louisiana, John Labat (Kevin Bacon), who seems to know way too much about events that happened in 1979 Texas (covered in X).
MAXXXINE writer/director Ti West also helmed and scripted X and its follow-up prequel PEARL, set in 1918 and co-written by and starring Goth as its title character. In fact, in heavy makeup, Goth had dual roles in X, as Maxine and the aged version of Pearl.
West shows great love for recreating Hollywood and particularly Hollywood Boulevard in all of its freak-flag-flying ‘80s heyday, with its styles, songs and subcultures. He also is clearly in his element with the slasher sequences, which have a bit of ‘80s flavor but also fit just fine in their present-day context.
Goth lives up to expectations, which is to say that she is terrific. Debicki, Uli Latukefu as a loyal friend and Giancarlo Esposito as Maxine’s multifaceted agent also make strong impressions. Bacon is overdoing it a tad as the out-of-town slimeball, but since the character is the type who would lay it on thick, the performance suits the purpose.
MAXXXINE has a couple of moments where it is teetering on being funny or scary and doesn’t quite commit fast enough to be either. There aren’t enough of these to severely dent the overall mood, but they register.
While West and Company never overtly promised this, it’s a little surprising to find that MAXXXINE doesn’t provide more narrative throughline with X and PEARL. There is, of course, Goth at the center of all three, and there are tonal similarities in places.
However, there isn’t some “aha” moment or plot point that makes each essential for the others. X informs Maxine’s character to the extent that we know she’s not easily intimidated (to put it mildly). It’s not necessary to have seen X to understand this, though; Goth makes it wholly clear in MAXXXINE.
PEARL factors in even less to the current proceedings. It is in no way obliged to do so. it’s just that the idea that the three films form a trilogy in the conventional sense will have viewers anticipating a kind of emphasis that doesn’t surface.
MAXXXINE is certainly a kick for fans of the type of moviemaking it celebrates. Moreover, there’s no doubt Maxine herself would love it.
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The Bikeriders starts in the middle of its own story. A man in a “Chicago Vandals” jacket, head hanging over the bar counter.
“You can’t be wearing no colors in this neighborhood,” someone threatens, to which he replies: “You’d have to kill me to get this jacket off of me.”
The man, Benny, approaches most things in his life with this same kind of fervor. His wife, Kathy, describes Benny camping out in her front yard until her boyfriend at the time packed up his car and left.
It’s through Kathy’s eyes that we come to know the Vandals: The leader, Johnny; his right hand, Brucie; and a menagerie of other club members — Cockroach, Zipco, Cal, Funny Sonny, Corky and Wahoo, to name a few. Kathy, with varying levels of exasperation, takes us through the club’s rise and fall over her interviews with Danny, the photojournalist meant to represent the author of “The Bikeriders,” the book on which the film is based.
Johnny’s vision for the club starts simply enough — just guys talking about bikes. But, as The Vandals grow, he realizes what he’s created might have become impossible to control.
The first, most obvious thing to say about “The Bikeriders” is that it’s gorgeous.
The beauty and effectiveness of Danny Lyon’s photography translates perfectly to film. Although an article by the Smithsonian reports 70% of the film’s dialogue is taken from Lyon’s interviews, you could almost watch this movie with the sound off.
Color, light and framing are used so beautifully here it’s hard not to spend the whole review geeking out. Stoplights, bars and midwestern houses and parking lots become art pieces, dioramas of the tumultuous life of a “bikerider.”
Beyond the surface, though, I’m not sure how to feel about this movie.
When Kathy says Johnny got the idea for the club while watching TV, we cut to him staring, enraptured, as 1953’s “The Wild One” plays in his living room. “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” The girl in the movie asks. Marlon Brando replies, “Whaddaya got?”
This listlessness, this sense that Johnny doesn’t have any purpose in mind, that the club doesn’t have much of a point, permeates the film. For me, it extended to the movie itself: At the beginning I thought life in a motorcycle gang would be exciting but dangerous, and by the end I thought the exact same thing.
Maybe it’s Kathy’s perspective leaking through the narration, but the deaths in this movie are, as a rule, abrupt and stupid. Once the shock wore off, I found myself wondering, “What was that all for?”
For all the glamor and power being a bikerider supposedly grants, they don’t die for great causes or in blazes of glory. The end is a car in reverse, an empty parking lot.
“The Bikeriders” is gorgeous and exciting, but doesn’t appear to say very much. Maybe that’s exactly what it’s saying.
Other stories by Caroline
Caroline Julstrom, intern, may be reached at 218-855-5851 or cjulstrom@brainerddispatch.com.
Caroline Julstrom finished her second year at the University of Minnesota in May 2024, and started working as a summer intern for the Brainerd Dispatch in June.
Bob Garver
Special to Valley News
“A Quiet Place: Day One” made a grave miscalculation with its advertising. Scenes were filmed with the intention of putting them in the trailers, but not the movie. This way, when people saw the movie, they wouldn’t be able to properly anticipate the surprises and story progression. To that end, the advertising succeeded, I was indeed thrown off while watching the movie. But here’s where they didn’t succeed: the scenes shot just for the trailers were terrible, with clumsy dialogue and careless pacing. I was so mad at Hollywood for continuing this series without the creative vision of director John Krasinski, especially when the movie looked like garbage without his input. I only saw this movie out of obligation for the column, and I wouldn’t
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