danieljfenner Reviews

Elephant (1989 TV Movie)

Slacker with double barrel shotguns

[9/10 · 26 September 2017]

This short film serves two purposes. It provides a chilling perspective on the anonymity of civil conflict and it offers a meditation on violence in the media. The premise is equally primitive and thought- provoking.

It simply follows around random, casually dressed men (who look like members of The Smiths and Big Country) as they slay other men in dilapidated Belfast settings. The minimal soundtrack of footsteps and gunfire creates a hypnotic and creepy atmosphere. All of the sound and lack thereof is necessary. The closeups of the handguns are necessary, as are the lingering shots of post-mortem bodies. Seconds can feel like minutes. Clarke's attempt to confront the audience forces us to ponder the dehumanization of The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The irony behind the appeal of this film is that for those who wish to watch violent action movies just for the sake of the spectacle of violence will be the most disappointed. That is exactly why this film is so important. It numbs us to violence. The lack of a narrative provides us the question of why we want to see what we are seeing. To turn gratuitous, prolonged violence into something boring becomes a statement on how desensitized a society can become to death and war.

Force Majeure (2014)

A Passive-Aggressive 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' for the IKEA set.

[9/10 · 6 February 2016]

Yet another European tale of the hidden misery to the elite class. Force Majeure is a film that requires some patience, but if you're immune to the slow, steady, long-take language of auteurs such as Haneke and Kaurismaki, then you are sure to be in good hands. This dry, existential comedy-drama is not as much about an avalanche as an event but about the hypothetical decisions that bring gender and marital tensions to the surface. This film ultimately explores the question of "what WOULD you do?" during a disaster as opposed to "what DID you do?" As a society we are always quick to judge how one rational person should have handled a given situation. For example, everyone believes that if they were involved in a hit and run, they are sure that they would stop and confront the situation, no matter how difficult it would be. The same logic applies to an Alpine avalanche. Does your fight or flight adrenaline kick in and usurp rational,responsible choice? Or does it take a perilous situation to reveal one's true insecurities?

As most people who have not seen the film already know, the basic premise is that of a well-to-do, ripped-from-the-IKEA-catalogue Nordic family, who witness a threatening avalanche. This shake-up causes the husband and father; Tomas, to flee in a panic without regard to his wife, Ebba and two young children, Vera and Harry. As the film progresses, the wife finds that she cannot let it go, even in the company of friends. A barrage of tense, passive-aggressive scenes follow. Once they reflect on the situation during a dinner with friends, they discover that they stubbornly cling to their own versions of the story. The narrative enters an uncomfortable wave of events that showcases the husband's denial, pride and eventual guilt and redemption.

What also makes Force Majeure interesting is how the situation affects the other characters. A domino effect ensues on their fellow vacationing friends' relationships as the couple reluctantly starts bringing them in to preside as jurors. This causes their friends Mats and Fanni to reflect on their own personalities and hypothetical reactions, eventually spiraling their own ideal vacation into a sleepless fiasco. The real show stealer here is the lurking Peter Stormare-esque maintenance man, who silently smokes and observes the unraveling drama, managing to run into the couple at the most compromising moments. It's also worth mentioning Ebba's man-eating, cougarish best friend Charlotte who further corrupts the psyche of Ebba in dealing with the situation.

In conclusion, director Ruben Ostlund keeps the pace perfectly crawling to give the viewer the necessary time to judge the characters and come to their own conclusions about what they would do. Although it is two hours long, the film keeps the tension building to its bewildering Swedish-style climax.

Enter the Void (2009)

Weak script, dialogue and acting saved by beautiful and innovative use of color, perspective and movement

[8/10 · 21 November 2015]

It has been said about Gaspar Noe that he is "not an intellectual, but a sensualist." That would be accurate. Enter the Void appeals to the pleasures, dis-pleasures and vices of the body and mind. He's giving you a sweet and sensuous back rub, and then right before the happy ending he takes out a utility stapler and plunges some heavy-duty staples into the back of your neck. He wants you to FEEL! Not to think. And there are few film makers who are accomplishing that today. Most film makers in the transgressive market are too concerned with the cerebral, the exploitative and the stress caused by the content.

The story revolves around the life and adventures of two young Americans, both brother and sister, who are living on the fringe of Tokyo society. Oscar,(played by Nathaniel Brown, who I would say is a bit stone-faced in the role but since most of the film is either his POV or over his shoulder, I will resort to "stone-necked.") is a drug dealer and Linda (played by the radiant Paz De La Huerta, who on the contrary, overacts quite a bit), is a stripper. Shall we call it the search for the Japanese Dream among the Post-Colonial American diaspora? Life is good. The drugs are good. The sex is good. Until a set up by an informant friend gets Oscar gunned down by police in a scum-walled night club bathroom stall. We follow his soul as he overlooks life go on without him. Most disturbing to him, he witnesses his sister's reaction and her ongoing abuse from her pimpy, yakuza-wanna-be boyfriend. What follows is a transcendental nightmare that blends the past, present and future.

Even though it comes off as a Soft-Core "Lost in Translation", Enter the Void is an epic to some degree. Not just because of the length, but also because it is a journey. Noe attempts to bring the viewer into the psychotropic experiences of Oscar with a barrage of color and patterns. It's not one of those "you gotta be high to experience this" type of films because within the first 20 minutes, you WILL be high. Some films are sobering. This film is intoxicating. And the trip isn't necessarily a good one. Technically though, the film is brilliant. The single-take shot down the flight of stairs that tracks the sleazy French guy rant about Buddhism is notable. Also, the sweeping POV crane shots are absolutely spellbinding. It's Touch of Evil-level "Wow!" Getting a low-flying helicopter journey through Tokyo's thriving nightlife is as good as any Rick Steve's tour-video. But he's probably high too, so it makes sense.

Sightseers (2012)

"He's not a person, he's a Dailymail reader."

[9/10 · 15 November 2015]

Is it black-comedy or is it a crime thriller with just a LOT of comic relief? We may never know, nor does the director - Mr. Wheatley know himself. Which is testament to his genius. When it comes to confusion, Mr. Wheatley has mastered it. Of course, the tone of the film's outcome is also due to the stars Oram and Lowe who also penned the dryly comic script. Yet it is Wheatley's surreal style including dramatic slow-motion, disorienting jump cuts and jerky hand-held camera work that bring us into this anti-hero world of dull British tourism. It's like he will tease you with something really flashy then go back to being very minimal. As if Kubrick and Ken Loach made a movie together and took turns with every scene. This unpredictable British indie-gem feels like "Henry: The Portrait of Miss Sunshine." Or better yet, if "Natural Born Killers" was directed by Alexander Payne.

Sightseers is a road comedy with a high body count, but it doesn't get lost in it's comedy. When it's time to be disturbed, brace yourself. Wheately has a way of building tension with whimsy and humour. You're thinking, "I know the tone is about to shift here." But it never does when you want it to. You just simply don't get what you want with a Wheatley film. "Kill List", also by Wheatley certainly didn't give anyone what they wanted but that didn't make it bad. We don't deserve a happy ending just because we are watching it. In many ways though it is a lot like "Kill List". They each open with a scene of domestic dysfunction, they each involve a pair of travelers with varying personalities who are incessantly irritated by their content peers that surround them. Whether they are folky Christians in a hotel restaurant or a rowdy bridal party in a tavern, they inspire the ire and scorn of their protagonists. If you like to laugh but then you find yourself having to schedule a visit with your therapist about said laughs, then Sightseers is for you! (Reading Rainbow interlude riff)

The Crow (1994)

Like a two-hour long music video

[7/10 · 14 November 2015]

But that is not necessarily a bad thing. The soundtrack to this film had shaped my adolescence even though I hadn't even seen the movie until twenty years later. In fact, most of the fun of watching it was the 90's nostalgia and to see and hear how the music was used in the film. It's almost as if there was a special block of a non-existent MTV show that catered to the goth/industrial set. The film flows like a series of music videos with its building-leaping action, surreal close-ups of the mysterious black-bird, and washed-out, sepia-drenched flashback sequences. While watching it I just remembered "DAMN, that song by Medicine is so great!" Too bad they never really took off. Truly, much of the music in this film still holds up even though I have changed drastically as a person when it comes to musical taste. Now. Let's get to the movie.

Part of me as a critic really wants to target and surgically strike the painfully elementary dialogue and predictable story line but it would be unfair. To even criticize an adaptation of a comic book would be like sending a food critic to Wendy's. It's pop-culture, and typically when it comes to comics and graphic novels, the target audience is adolescent boys who wish to pass on the James Joyce and Bronte sisters melodrama. In other words, the intention is to be narratively pedestrian and simple while focusing on the tone, atmosphere and artistic prowess. It is fantasy. I'm not going to bring a gun to this knife fight.

So what about the visuals and the film itself? It truly is a gorgeous film. Sweeping Hitchockian crane shots, birds eye view shots and blazing action sequences. It gracefully shifts back and forth from a gritty urban action thriller to a highly detailed romance. There is enough substance here to satisfy your inner Batman as well as your Wings of Desire. It is the perfectly appeasing date movie. If I saw it 1994, it would have been cliché. Seeing it now, I'm thinking "they don't make em like this anymore." Plus it gave Ernie Hudson a chance to show that he is more than Winston. More than the token tag-along.

Trash Humpers (2009)

basically art-house Jackass

[7/10 · 3 October 2015]

I like the part when they hose down the wheel chair in the car wash.

I was gonna click the "spoiler" box but lol you can't spoil a Harmony Korine movie because no plots lol And then there are these fake old people who hump the trash but they were just the cans. I was disappointed by that because it makes more sense to hump bags of trash. I thought they would be humping the bags of trash. That's actually possible. Can't really hump a big ol metal trash can.

So these inexplicably agile elderly folks who live and act like teenagers live in this home together and they bring around this vaudevillian group of guests who perform for them and then murder them. Thats the plot.

You know how retirement communities will hire Wayne Newton look-a-likes and stuff like that? Well this place does that too but this time they are shirtless men waxing poetics about immortality and redemption.

I like the part when they hired that comedian wearing a sling and after a really funny politically incorrect joke he breaks the fourth wall and says "did you get that? did you get that whole thing?" and then the cameraman starts heckling him and then he says "your'e a fukcin ashole, you can all just go home cuz I'm trying to tell jokes up here." And that's the funniest thing he says.

Pixote (1980)

Unflinching, powerful examination of a child's life in the favela.

[10/10 · 25 July 2015]

At the time of Pixote's production in 1980-1981, over half of the cast of "City Of God" wasn't even an idea or even a twinkle in their father's eyes. Over two decades before the release of Fernando Meirelles' ultra-violent crime saga depicting feral youth growing up too fast in Rio, "Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco" set the bar as high as Christ the Redeemer overlooks the city in terms of capturing an accurate reality of the brutal favela life. This hyper-realist, Oliver Twist-by-way-of-Larry Clark account of wayward Brazilian youth still by today's standards provides stark, grim and shocking imagery. Regardless of the generational gap, what truly separates "Pixote" from "City of God" is that it didn't need to use highly stylized violence to compel the viewer. It relied more on the realism and hopelessness of the characters, the blunt sexuality, and a much more punctual yet effective treatment on street violence and state power. In the beginning of the film, (and not every version may feature this) director Hector Babenco (who went on to direct some mainstream American films such as "Kiss of The Spider Woman" and "Ironweed") makes a brief fourth wall breaking announcement of his intentions to depict the daily life of a child in the urban landscape of Sao Paolo. Within this prologue, he reveals the lead protagonist, Fernando Ramos da Silva as himself in his natural habitat.

As the child on child violence in City of God seems sensational, when one of these children in Pixote does commit a heinous act, you see the innocence being chipped away frame by frame. Unlike the murderous, maniacal Lil Ze from Ciudad de Deus - who seems to attribute his penchant for crime to something inexplicably innate and evil inside him - Pixote and his cohorts start off as confused, troubled innocent kids who escape their prison-like orphanage and enter the crime world out of survival. In other words, Pixote strives to capture the root causes of youth delinquency, and puts it into a much more constructive context.

As far as structure, Pixote is very much like Full Metal Jacket (although it came out five years before, I'm aware). It's split into two parts. The first is the children's experiences in a youth detention center, where they witness and unsuccessfully dodge sexual assault and corruption. This first act could serve as the basic training, complete with the vulnerabilities, the bonding and the resistance soon to follow as seen in Full Metal Jacket. Once a brave select group manages to escape after one of their fellow boarders mysteriously disappears, the four adolescents flee to Rio De Janeiro. Act two is the struggle and eventual dissolution of the four youngsters as they experience complications from drug trafficking, pickpocketing and prostitution in Rio, which offers some beautiful and gritty establishing shots of the city at night. These sequences are parallel to the urban warfare, sniper-dodging chaotic second act of Full Metal Jacket. There is one particular moving scene on the beach when the youngsters share their aspirations within their delusions of freedom and future success. It's just so inspiring yet depressing to see how much hope these kids still have after everything they have gone through. And their situations only gets worse.

What makes Pixote even more ahead of its time is how it treats the theme of sexual identity so sensitively. In an incredibly powerful performance, Jorge Juliao, who portrays the gender dysphoric Lilica provides depth to the character. Lilica takes on a maternal role towards Pixote, as she is several years elder than the titular protagonist. This film demonstrates the ability of humans to overcome their differences in the name of survival and trust. There is genuinely a familial bond between the characters, but their dynamics are not restricted. In a time and place where LGBT representations in media would have been taboo, Lilica brings about a character that is far more multi-dimensional than anything US cinema has attempted to do up to that point. Juliao manages to balance the nurturing with the self destructive aspects of her character without slipping into the "hysterical gay" stereotype.

Last but not least, the second half also displays the development of the runaways' relationship with Sueli, an aging yet destructively young at heart sex worker, brilliantly portrayed by Marilia Pera. The climax unravels as these kids move in with Sueli. They take on a pimp role and subsequently use her to bait clients that they can rob. As criminal amateurs, they must deal with their own priorities and their complex emotions come into play as they each search for a role within Sueli that she may not be able to provide for them due to her own insecurities.

While it is certainly fair to debate if this is art or exploitation, in short, we could conclude that Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco, is provocative and disturbing but necessary and politically resonant. When Larry Clark's "Kids" was released in 1995, it was critically summed up by Janet Maslin as "a wake up call to the modern world." Well if Kids was a wake-up call, then Pixote was the equivalent of your car alarm going off in the middle of the night...and it's parked a block away.

Sound of Noise (2010)

A Must See For All Drummers. An Ambitious, Feel-Good Satire on the Avant-garde

[9/10 · 3 July 2015]

Before going into this film, there were a few factors that led me to believe that this was going to be a dark film. One, was that it was described as a crime film, the R rating and the fact that it is Swedish. I must guiltily admit that as an American, there is a stereotype that Swedish film is dark and/or depressing (considering the work of Bergman, Moodyson, Let the Right One In, The Steig Larssen adaptations etc). Unfortunately, this is due to the aforementioned artists and narratives as being what is presented to the US market. However, I will no longer harbor such a skewed image of said culture.

Sound of Noise is certainly not a dark film by any means. It is a heart-warming, quirky tale of family, forgiveness and the ultimate quest for silence. It's an extended adaptation of a short from nearly a decade before that involved the leading actress of the film, comedian Sanna Persson.

The films centers around two percussionists who recruit a motley crew of other drummers to help them carry out their elaborate performance pieces. Each drummer has a different specialty, as in the orchestral percussionist, the lounge drummer, the electronic drummer and so on. The film takes on a satirical form of a heist genre pic. Just imagine Oceans Eleven but with drummers instead of safecrackers and card counters. Some may feel that the elaborate performances are over the top and too Stomp-like but I think that is the point. In the most subtle sense, it strives to provide tongue-in-cheeck commentary on the urban, avant-garde squatters who are constantly trying to top themselves at every gallery crawl.

For the most part, despite the rating, Sound of Noise is fun for the whole family. Your kids need to read subtitles anyway. It's good for them.

File under: Napoleon Dynamite, Wes Anderson

Crash (I) (2004)

Hightly stylized and well-acted but you can't polish a turd.

[6/10 · 29 June 2015]

This 2005 Best Picture-winning, West Coast "Do The Right Thing," is a Disney-fied, unfunny attempt to expose our collective prejudices. Unlike the 1989 Spike Lee joint, it superficially places the harbored racist stream-of-consciousness of its characters on their sleeves. Of course there are people like this in real life; the pampered politician's wife (played by Sandra Bullock) who doesn't trust the tattooed Latino locksmith (Michael Pena), who is really a respectable, hard-working, God-fearing Dad. It's not that a situation like that doesn't occur in real life, but it is the hyperbolic way that it is presented that falls flat. There isn't very much depth to the characters. They all play these racist caricatures or victimized caricatures that serve as vehicles for monologues that the author wants to express, which is the cycle of racism and glass house-stone throwing culture of America that we live in. For example, the black insurance lady who had to sit through Cop Matt Dillon's racial tirade only to espouse her own stereotypes toward a fellow Asian motorist in a later scene. Almost every character does this and it just becomes predictable. Seriously, Spike Lee did this fifteen years prior with the infamous race-based soliloquies in Do The Right Thing, and it was not only effective, it was funny. Crash simply does not deliver.

The ensemble of brilliant actors and solid performances couldn't pull this textbook "Wild LA" script from the burning wreck of its own conclusion. It was certainly watch-able for the performances alone, and I will say that some of the key plot twists were creative and well-placed. Which is why I won't trash it. It is a good movie in a technical sense but it certainly is not an Oscar-winner in my book. If the point of this story is redemption, then it did not succeed in conveying that. Especially with Matt Dillon's character. I don't believe that his actions in the film were redemptive. Fate can't bail out your guilt.

The Seventh Continent (1989)

A bleak, passive-horror. A challenging meditation on the hopelessness of the Western bourgeoisie.

[10/10 · 26 June 2015]

It's 1989. As the Cold War was taking its last desperate gasps of air, filled with the debris of that crumbling wall, a demure, isolated and all-too-familiar middle-class family sits at their breakfast table in Austria as they continue to perform their meandering daily activities. Is this a better life? Is this what the Western, free-market promised? Just a bunch of junk they don't need, depressing karaoke television and convenience food? Did this family miss the comfort of Communism? We don't know, but without getting all Fight Club about it, Michael Haneke's debut, The Seventh Continent displays the bourgeois misery that serves as the pilot light of the ensuing self-destruction of Western civilization. With his cold-clinical style using diegetic sound and long takes that challenge our patience, Haneke brings us something more sobering and nihilistic than anything that David Fincher and Chuck Palahniuk could brainstorm.

What makes this film so effective is the vicarious nature of the narrative. These people did what I did in the last week and will probably do again tomorrow. We dine with them, we shower with them. We see ourselves in them. While they are economically stable, they seem to have lost their souls. In typical Haneke fashion, he dissects the ordinary family and isolates their experiences to capture their emptiness. He brings out the themes that we would see in Funny Games and Time of The Wolf. The emasculated, apathetic father, the mother whose emotions are on the edge, as we see when she is going through the car wash that reminds her of the accident they saw in the rain. It's a Kafka tale with no transformation. Nearly a decade later, the US took a crack at this theme with the Oscar-sweeping American Beauty. With that film, Lester Burnham gave the viewer a glimpse into the emotional failure of the American Dream. Yet Lester took charge and gave himself what he wanted. As he defied the control of his wife and shed responsibility, it became the ultimate Men's Rights battle-cry. And as with other American suburban satires, like Happiness, there is still a degree of mythology. Life can be that bad for some people, but not for every member of one family. It comes off as a sort of misery-porn. But Haneke does not allow the audience to have what it wants. He wants to probe us and make us question our priorities and collective reality. There is no dream. No fantasy, because what their wasted potential as humans is too depressing to think about. No escape. Or maybe there is, but what is the cost of that escape?

Without giving too much away, there is a climactic sequence in which the family puts their priorities to the test by destroying their property. What about the record collection? Is that the husband's or the wife's? Is there a feminist subtext behind a woman destroying a man's record collection?

And finally, as far as destruction goes, I will say, that the fish tank scene in this film far exceeds the potency of the Martin Riggs "MINEY MO!" from Lethal Weapon 2.

.....Also from 1989.....(scratching chin)

The Boy Who Cried Bitch (1991)

There's A Parrot In My Croissant!

[10/10 · 3 May 2015]

Watching The Boy Who Cried Bitch left me with the same reaction after seeing Hal Hartley's "Trust" more than fifteen years ago.

"Where are the awards?"

1991 was quite a year for these grim, character-driven indie films. As "Silence of the Lambs" dominated the year critically, films like Trust and The Boy Who Cried Bitch were hanging from the helicopter rafters of Hollywood. With its modest production value and emphasis on the performances of the actors, this family drama offers more of a meditation of childhood mental health within the context of family dysfunction. It's terse and brilliant script penned by Catherine May Levin, was supposedly based on true events but I cannot find a lot of other information about the author. Is she the mother of a child with a mental illness? Was she the child, but she made the character into a boy for the film? I don't know how this story connects to her life and I am interested in knowing more about the author because it really is a well-written piece of celluloid

While the leading role of the stuttering, violent, maladjusted Dan Love - played bey Harley Cross receives most of the well-deserved accolades, the real show stealer here is the role of Candice Love, the mother played by Karen Young. This is truly one of the most riveting performances I've seen in years. Imagine the commanding, emotional range of Sally Field without the ham. Her eye movements, the delivery of the lines, her intermittent shifts between mania hopelessness. The acting is stellar all around. I would also like to give an honorable mention to Dennis Boutsikaris. He has really locked himself into quite an archetype as the soft-spoken yet arrogant Dr. Orin Fell the head psychologist of the mental hospital that Dan is confined in. He exudes a soft-evil, a passive-aggressive, manipulative agent of authority not too far from his characters portrayed in "The Dream Team" and in "Better Call Saul."

The main drawback of this film is the production quality which is fortunately saved by the performances and the script. A better sound design could have been implemented. There are scenes where the boom mic is in the shot and there is a great presence of hisses when the actors say their "s" and "p" sounds. Aside from that, I would highly recommend this film. If you are a fan of the "troubled-teen-trying-to-adjust" trope in cinema, like Good Will Hunting, White Oleander, etc., then The Boy Who Cried Bitch offers a much more harrowing, less Hollywood-feel-good, approach to this difficult subject.

Dead Man's Shoes (2004)

Oh...you're going...you're going

[10/10 · 2 May 2015]

Shane Meadows' "Dead Man's Shoes," is a tense, refreshing little British revenge thriller. It has a beautiful, haunting soundtrack by that crew of Drag City murder-ballad troubadours - i.e. Bonny Prince Billy, M. Ward. The music selection alone really captures the tone of the aimless, drifting shell of a man that is the protagonist - Richard, an ex soldier who is suffering from some Post-Traumatic Stress.

I've seen some people compare this film to Taxi Driver, and some say it is a slasher. I disagree with both assertions. In the case of Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle operates out of pure misanthropy. His actions are based on a moral imperative that is reflective of his own sense of righteousness. Those he perpetrates are subjectively "bad" people. His violent spree is socially grounded vigilantism - at least grounded in his own disturbed, paranoid way. As for Richard in Dead Man's Shoes, he is aware of his flaws and his violent capabilities and sees himself on a very limited mission of revenge. His moral imperative is strictly personal and not based on policing society at large, but only to exact a satisfying revenge. As far as it being a slasher, the viewer is far too connected to the mind and motive of the perpetrator. Typically, for a film to be a slasher, the killer is someone who is mysterious and has a vague motive and does not possess the additional role of the protagonist. While watching Dead Man's Shoes, we are not running FROM the killer, we are running WITH the killer.

The overall production style is executed in a realist, almost documentary-like style. The character's interaction are very natural, there's a discomfort to it all as if the characters don't realize they are in a movie. Great acting all around, including the performance by real-life boxer Gary Stretch. The contrast of color to black and white to separate the past from the present is well done, with lots of double-exposed shots and a hand held cinema-verite technique. It allows us to be more emotionally involved with the story. As Richard becomes more brutal towards his targets - a gang of small-time criminals - the flashbacks gradually reveals the escalated abuse that this gang directed at Richard's brother Anthony. This is a very effective editing choice, which tries to explore if the punishment fits the crime. That is something that I think tries to conjure up in the viewer. As brutal as it is, the violence is demonstrated in an intelligent way. The direction relies more on building tension instead of going for the gore. It's more suspenseful than disturbing. For the most part, this is a solid, well-paced, original Ken Loach by way of John Cassavettes film.

The only criticism is that first of all, in the present day, the gang members just seem so inept and clownish that it's hard to believe that they are the same people abusing Anthony. On top of that, and believe me, this is not a spoiler, but when Richard finds one of the gang-members, he's just some guy out of nowhere. I like that they make him out to be some boring, domesticated guy but I feel like his character should have been more developed before becoming a sudden central character. It just seems like the audience shouldn't be that emotionally vested in his character in either a negative way or a positive way.

Still, a highly recommended, unpredictable little sleeper of a film.