Lovelace (2013)

Peter Sarsgaard tickles Amanda Seyfried's tonsils in Lovelace (2013).

At a glance:

The real Linda Lovelace.

How far does a girl have to go to untangle her tingle, asks the poster for Deep Throat (1972), the purported most profitable indie flick of all time at some $600m (not accordin to the mob who funded it), out of which tragic starlet Linda Lovelace received none of the US$1250 owed to her. I wish I were livin in those pre-Internet days to experience fuck flicks at standalone cinema wankathons, at least once in my life. If I did, I wish I got to know Linda Susan Boreman, the unassumin Florida schoolgirl turned world famous porn star, often credited as bringing adult entertainment into the forefront of mainstream attention. This very sympathetic and one-sided Andy Bellin / W. Merritt Johnson treatment is a biopic based on Eric Danville's 2001 book The Complete Linda Lovelace, focusin on how the lass escapes her religious mother (Sharon Stone) to meet and marry the charismatic hustler Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) who would end up bein her papa pimp and punisher. Who would've thought that Linda's impressive capacity for fellatio would send her up the dizzyin heights of international superstardom and then down so far to the lowest levels of human depravity? Lovelace (2013) is a movie I was excited to read about and I wanted to like.

Bad news on the doorstep:

Juno Temple would've been my top choice for Linda.

Dirty beauties Juno Temple and Chloe Sevigny both have small roles in this and I wish either of them had landed the leadin part instead. Was Amanda Seyfried cast because of her freckles and her 60s style, upside-down heart-shaped tits? I read that Kate Hudson was first choice! What a disaster that would've been. Far more critical than that, of course, is how easily the picture goes down, when contrasted against the cultural significance of its characters. I'm talkin about how it "reduces an immensely disturbing, politically byzantine tale to a series of cartoonish vignettes" and how "this celeb-studded biopic squanders a gutsy performance by Amanda Seyfried while making '70s porn look scarcely more sleazy than a movie-of-the-week melodrama from the period", accordin to Rob Nelson for Variety. Sarsgaard and Adam Brody especially give some layered, highly watchable performances but the way all the characters enter and exit the proceedings, e.g. Playboy legend Hugh Hefner played by James Franco, simply devalues the explosive subject matter. Not only is the camerawork rather static, the characterisation makes caricatures out of everyone and many potentially powerful scenes lose their emotional gravitas, e.g. Dad (Robert Patrick) talkin to his little girl on the phone about how he had to walk out of the cinema, and Linda survivin a beatin in the streets only to be rescued by cops who were more interested in gettin her autograph.

Well, at least the retro typeset and production design was spot on.

James Franco's pipe-wielding Hugh Hefner!

Perennial wonderment:

Will we ever find out how much the movie actually made? Did Hugh Hefner really get a blowjob from Linda and was he really a sympathetic figure who wanted her to be a legitimate movie star? Was Linda actually a pathological liar and used everyone, just as much as they used her? It would've been nice to at least cover the other angle about how she felt the anti-porno movement also manipulated her durin her last days.

Reminds me of:

The wonderfully depressin biopics Auto Focus (2002) about Bob Crane and What's Love Got To Do With It (1993) about Tina Turner - both of which are vastly more resonant and wholly entertainin than this one.

I can't remember if I cried:

When it stopped at 92 minutes. What kind of self-respectin biopic has such a short runtime? No wonder everythin seems rushed!

Most memorable line:

Chuck says: "No, Linda, it's Shakespeare. I told them you do a great English accent, particularly with a cock down your throat."

Innit sad that a movie so big gave so little to Linda?

Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?

Total Film's Kate Sables notes that for a movie obsessed with truth-tellin, Lovelace "ignores the competing accounts of its heroine’s porno past, privileging only her own version". Another online comment dismisses Lovelace as "nothing more than a by-the-numbers, woman empowerment, Lifetime channel Movie Of The Week…with nudity". I do feel it's not very tender and disappointingly mediocre. For a more academic view on the topic, check out the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat. By the way, does anyone know what happened to that other Linda Lovelace story that was supposed to be out this year, Inferno: A Linda Lovelace Story (2013), starrin Malin Akerman and Sasha Grey? I read that Lindsay Lohan was supposed to be the lead. Oh well, meanwhile I'll have to check out Paul Schrader's The Canyons to see how LiLo is doin. ★★1/2
The day the music died:

R.I.P. Linda "Lovelace" Boreman (26 Jan 1949 - 22 Apr 2002)
and Charles Everett "Chuck" Traynor (21 Aug 1937 - 22 July 2002)

Bonus material:

Some of them like to use you, some of them like to be of use.

Killer Joe (2012)

Fried chicken fellatio. Trailer trash strippers. Bloodthirsty biker bailiffs.
Killer Joe has got 'em all.

At a glance:

The last time playwright Tracy Letts and director William Friedkin got together, it was for the schizo sci-fi Bug (1996). More accessible than that genre-bender is Killer Joe (2012), a slick little shocker that goes OTT with some dark humour, havin been described as Larry Clark doin a Red Rock West (1993) to Coen brothers crime caper with a Pulp Fiction (1994) gloss-over. Having failed the NC-17 appeal, the peculiar trailer they cut hints little towards the violent hicksploitation this is; and the movie may have proved even harder to market without its comfortable star draw. We follow the titular Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a bent NYPD cop who accepts a contract to kill the estranged, good-for-nothin mother of the dysfunctional Smith family comprisin of deadbeat son Chris (Emile Hirsch), sexpot stepmum Sharla (Gina Gershon), halfwit redneck dad Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) and daughter Dottie (Juno Temple) - the nubile virgin who ends up bein the collateral when the deal goes awry. Everyone is at some point or another either naked, half-naked or bathed in blood. Fire up the chicken and let the good times roll.

Bad news on the doorstep:

Juno Temple takes it all off for Killer Joe.

While it's easier to dismiss the complaints that are based on mismatched genre expectations, I seem to have shaken off the post-screenin euphoria to discover that this is ultimately a pointless, though entertainin film. It's also easy to echo At A Theater Near You's Chris Pandolfi in havin to recognise the film's technical merits and strong performances but Variety's Justin Chang hammered it home by questionin its raison d'etre to arrive at the lingerin feelin that this is some kind of inside joke - "a mostly well-done adaptation that never quite convinces you it was worth doing well in the first place". Somehow Clarence Carter's vulgar 1977 hit Strokin', a theme in the movie, makes us all feel a little played indeed.
Perennial wonderment:

It's only been six years but Juno Temple is certainly on the up and up; and it seemed so long ago since she first appeared as Cate Blanchett's annoyin teen daughter in Notes On A Scandal (2006). She might have landed the job here only because not many actresses agree to full frontals (ditto Gina Gershon, albeit with beaver wig), but her intercontinental brand of slightly sexual ferocity has seen her held her own in The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Kaboom (2010), The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), The Three Musketeers (2011), Wild Child (2008) and Dirty Girl (2010). Here in Killer Joe, she's 10 years older than the 13-year-old jailbait she's supposed to be for McConaughey's paedo cop but the young lady does command some screen presence, whether she's doin a standup doggie for him or aimin a gun to his head. Too bad Chloë Grace Moretz is still only 15, you can hear the paedos concur. Will look forward to seein her The Brass Teapot (2012) next.
Reminds me of:
Sidney Lumet's Before The Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) and the Coens' Blood Simple (1984). Killer Joe is only the most recent in Friedkin's very varied 16-film oeuvre, which includes films like The Exorcist (1973) and Cruising (1980).

I can't remember if I cried:

The fried chicken fellatio. Killer Joe will forever be best remembered for an act of sadistic misogyny so degradin even Gina seen-all done-all Gershon looks genuinely humiliated. Very nice. Charmin McConaughey, the quintessential Texan talent, never acted better accordin to many, but it's also funny to read to that director Billy Friedkin says the man didn't even get it when he first read the script!

Most memorable line:

Thomas Haden Church: "I've never had a thousand dollars all my life."

Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?

Thanks to Rue Morgue for the Scotiabank Theatre screenin in Toronto but now I feel guilty that the film's Twitter handle had retweeted my earlier one-sentence review praisin this as "vulgar, pulpy, pointless and chicken-sucking good". It's much closer to the chicken poutine I had prior to the show - a mess of instant, in-your-face, gratifyin gravy that you'd live to reconsider the mornin after.★★1/2
Bonus material:
"Totally twisted, deep-fried, Texas redneck, Billy Friedkin-directed, NC-17-rated, trailer park murder story masterpiece" as marketed on its Facebook page. Go check it out - they do have some funny photo mash-ups there.