Do you really think of The Overnight as a Duplass Brothers film? Brice’s relationship with them was certainly instrumental in getting them onboard as producers, but I wonder whether they were just the money. I can’t think of anything Jay or Mark has created that has a similar sensibility to The Overnight, but I might be overlooking something. I think of Duplass movies as stuff like that puffy chair movie or Cyrus or Lynn Shelton movies. Loveable slacker indie stuff, you know?
I think the real appeal of The Overnight, aside from its weirdness, is watching Adam Scott and Jason Schwartzman doing something completely different from their usual schtick. I’ve especially enjoyed the rare times Adam Scott gets to work outside his comfort zone. The Overnight belongs in that category for how out of his depth his character is.
But, yeah, Creep is really just a competent found footage horror movie. Which sets it head and shoulders above 95% of all found footage movies, but it’s still inside the formulaic box of that genre. :)
My mistake, because I didn’t know they didn’t direct it. I certainly saw a similar sensibility with the Duplass films I have seen. Cyrus explorers some interesting interpersonal relationships with a way too-close son and boyfriend butting heads and Cyrus trying to work it out with Tomei’s character. I really enjoy a movie that justifies a much more attractive woman giving a schlub a chance and this movie really delivered on that. I also really liked the brothers’ relationship in the Do-Deca-Deathalon. Jeff, Who Stays at Home had the great buddy relationship. And looking at the films they produced, I’d say a strong attention to relationships is a very important theme to them. I’ve heard the Duplass relationship is ironically very strong. I’d just assumed they were studying other’s problematic relationships as means to study their own.
Have you seen The One I Love. I’ll admit that I thought was a Duplass movie as well (apologies for my mental laziness). Mark acts in that movie (both Produced) and it is a terrific look at a relationship in a very unusual manner. This was the movie that I thought I would lay down as the better Duplass film, so I have no grounds to stand on beyond recommending everyone go see The One I Love.
Getting back to The Overnight, I think Scott and Schwartsman both start off doing their usual schtick, but then the movie had the courage to take Schwartzmans schmoozing and Scott’s vulnerable charisma to a very interesting point. Of course, they did sort of shy a way from going all the way with it. I guess that would have been a different movie and they wouldn’t have had time to focus on how they got to the point of going all the way with it.
Thanks for the link to The Vicious Kind. I like Scott enough to watch it because he’s in it, but JK Simmons makes it that much more enticing.
Thanks malkav. Seeing that, it was that review that got me to see The One I Love. So, thank you as well Tom, and if that had been a Duplass movie, it would have been their best.
Well, to be fair to you, there’s absolutely a group of filmmakers who are in the same orbit as the Duplass brothers, creatively, financially, and/or thematically. That would include Patrick Brice (Overnight, Creep), Lynn Shelton (Humpday, Your Sister’s Sister), and probably the director of The One I Love. Just like there’s a group of North Carolina David Gordon Green filmmakers or New York Scorcese filmmakers or Portland Kelly Reichardt filmmakers. I actually think it’s cool you picked up on the continuity there.
Netflix recently added He Never Died, which Tom recommended on the front page a while back. Having watched it, I would second Tom’s recommendation. There’s a couple of mildly clunky reveals towards the end but on the whole I loved the performance Henry Rollins gives as a man who can barely be bothered by any of the things that are suddenly disrupting his deliberately empty life.
Apparently Rollins and the director would like to continue the story with a TV series. I’d be in.
He Never Died was my surprise hit of this year (so far). As you say, it’s clunky at times, and the acting seems amateurish at times, but for some reason all those ingredients actually work in the film’s favor.
My only problem is that for weeks after seeing it, I couldn’t stop imagining Jack in every action film I watched.
Heh. From your description above I never would have expected the description in the link: “A reclusive immortal who needs human flesh but tries to stay clean finds himself cast back into society by a gang of thugs and his estranged daughter.”
Netflix only has it on DVD but I really want to recommend Suicide Kings. Just watched the Special Edition the other night, damn if it isn’t a great flick. Walken is spot on as the crime boss. As usual. Denis Leary, Brad Garret, Jay Mohr, John Galecki. Fucking awesome.
Lono Veccio: Well, if you give me a couple minutes of your time, I got a few things I’d like to talk to ya about. You know, uh, what you did wasn’t really your fault. It’s what you call a, uh, genetic defect. Mom called it the, the gene. My grandfather had the gene. He, uh, came over on the boat from Ireland in 1912 and I guess he passed it on to my old man. My old man was a great guy, a real pussy cat, you know, hard worker. Big sports fan, but sometimes on his way home from the docks he liked to stop in with the guys and have a couple of beers, ya know. I remember coming home from school one day, and, uh, the whole house was dark. Couldn’t figure it out. I heard my mom crying off in the dark someplace, and I was old enough at that point I could reach the light switch. I turned the lights on, and I saw what he did to her. So I went to my room and I got the, uh, baseball bat. Mickey Mantel model my old man give me for Christmas, and I found the old man passed out in the bathtub, and I tattooed him. Needless to say, when I came home every day from school after that, the, uh, house is lit up like Ebbets Field, and the old man, uh, never drank again. So all I’m saying to you is, if you wanna drink, you go ahead and drink. But if I ever find out that you laid your hands on that little girl again, me and Mr. Mantle are gonna pay you a visit, my friend.
Here’s a little note for fans of the classic war film The Longest Day. The streaming version on Netflix has the English version of the German and French scenes. These are NOT dubbed scenes, they are the scenes reshot by the actors saying all of their lines in English. The phrases “Rubber Dummies” and “The Invasion” lose a lot when it is not in German.
It may be interesting to see if you have seen it a few times and not seen it in English before, but IMHO the subtitled French/German scenes are much better. Get the DVD.
Sean Connery is still as unintelligible as before.
