| Title | Best thing you'll see all week: Wrong Cops |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Movie reviews |
| When | May 7, 2014 |
I almost broke up with Quentin Dupiuex after Wrong, his last movie. It had all the weirdness of Rubber, but none of the intensity, none of the self-referential awareness that it was a movie about movies. It never arrived at Hollywood..
Read the full articleIs it just me or was there a weird blur in the bottom eighth of the screen most of the time? Was that some style thing? A cheapness thing?
There might have been times the edges of the screen were out of focus. But Dupieux is his own cinematographer, so stuff that like is intentional.
Did you like it? Too weird? Not funny? What did you think?
I saw this at a film festival about a month ago. I was a bit worried Rubber may have been a one time thing going in and, to be honest, after a the first ten minutes I wasn't quite digging it, but once it got going, I loved it. I been curious what you'd think of it as you quite liked Rubber.
Should I really skip Wrong?
Also, "Yeah, totally just dudes..."
Wrong will certainly temper your expectations about Dupieux. Maybe I'm being unfair, but it didn't work for me at all and I have no idea what he was trying to do. It was almost as if someone was imitating a Quentin Dupieux movie. Some amusing moments, but ultimately no impact at all.
Also, "WRITE A BOOK ABOUT WHAT?"
Absolutely hilarious. I rarely laugh out loud during a movie and it happened more than once in Wrong Cops.
You are dead right on Dupieux's style. I might not completely understand it, but I know it's there. Once I could relax and stop yelling "what the fuck" I started to just enjoy the ride. Whatever weird dialogue or editing he wanted to throw at me, I was on board. While I didn't care for the strange narrative of Rubber, I enjoyed his commitment to it in Wrong Cops. And that may have come from knowing what Dupieux is capable of and the absurdities he'll use to get his point across.
I mean, really, who makes a movie called Wrong then goes onto make another called Wrong Cops? He's trolling us, right?
One of my favorite elements of Wrong Cops was the music. I'm not sure how many people know the connection with Mr. Oizo but I found this commentary hilarious. It felt like a cute little inside joke at first, "hey what was that music you were playing?" then it just launches into a very self aware ego stroke.
You're right, this won't be for everyone but thanks for the rec. Now I'm super curious about Wrong.
The best thing I saw all week was the image in my minds eye of the writer of this review laughing manically as he waxed poetically about this movie in a positive light as what must surely be metric tonnes of kickback money floods into his bank account. There are no actual words to express just how indescribably unlikeable this collection of still images replayed at 32fps truly is. I could easily watch Cameron's Avatar with my naughty bits resting in boric acid with a smile on my face after watching Wrong Cops. And I say this with zero hyperbole.
I much, much belatedly watched this (after watching Wrong a couple years back). What a strange movie. But then, I say that about Dupieux’s stuff consistently.
It is actually related to Wrong, kind of. There’s a very brief scene when Little has left the dying neighbor in his car to go say hi to his family and the main guy from Wrong and his dog walk by, he checks the car out…and then he nopes right on outta there and is never seen again.
Is the movie the family is watching there Rubber? It sure evoked Rubber.
I was wondering why Marilyn Manson was in this movie but he also appears on Tim and Eric and Eastbound & Down, it looks like, so I suspect he was just friends with people doing the movie.
That’s a great catch! And that was absolutely a scene from Rubber.
As for Manson, I think he’s a “serious” actor. At least I’m assuming that’s how he sees himself based on the movies I’ve seen him in. I really liked him as a backwoods hitman in a movie called Let Me Make You A Martyr, which no one but me saw, but which I loved. It was kind of like a low-key hillbilly noir thriller with a twist. And Manson was, of course, nothing like his David Dolores Frank character from Wrong Cops.
I might have seen him in other movies, but Martyr and Wrong Cops are the only two I remember. I probably confused him with Rob Zombie before that. All those aggressively goth singer guys look alike to me.
He doesn’t appear to have been in many movies (although it’s a little difficult to parse with IMDB crediting him as “acting” in dozens of his music videos), and I’ve not heard of most of the ones he does seem to have been in (including Let Me Make You A Martyr) although I was surprised to learn he seems to have had reasonably substantial roles on Sons of Anarchy and something called Salem, in terms of TV. Also he was on American Gods, I guess? But after Fuller left.
By the way, since I haven’t mentioned it in this thread, if you liked Mark Burnham in Wrong Cops, he’s great as the villain in an indie thriller called Lowlife from 2017:
It’s hyperviolent, but it’s a really clever script that navigates among a few groups of unlikely characters in absurd situations. As the villain, Burnham is kind of a nexus for the plot and he gets to do some great villain stuff. It’s a much better role than he got in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie, where you never even see his face.
Yes, Lowlife is great and Burnham was very good at being loathsome in it.
