ALEX ROSS PERRY, filmmaker: significant auteur or just a smarter ex-video clerk than Tarantino?

writer-centric films are rarely ever any good. although maybe this one makes a virtue of having an irredeemable asshole as its protagonist, most attempt to make their misanthropes lovable/righteous in some way (Wonder Boys, Adaptation etc.)

I'll p watch it just cuz I like the cast

I was really disappointed by The Color Wheel after hearing a lot of good about it. Listen Up Philip felt immensely big compared to how cheap it obviously has been, with a ton of characters having their stories told - I think Moss' parts are very important as well - and the very good use of analogue feel. Queen on Earth is much smaller in scope as well, and while it's better than The Color Wheel, it feels very typically American indie as well. He is a good stylist, which sets him apart from mumblecore and the like, and means that the sky is kinda the limit when he gets proper funding to do what he likes, but his smaller films feel to small to me. When it comes to creepy psychological horror about women friendships, I prefer something like Josephine Decker's thematically similar Butter on the Latch.

He is pretty 'funny' in person. There was a Q&A after Philip, and he talked about how he couldn't understand why people disliked Philip throughout the film, since he is at his worst to the completely peripheral characters, and why would you care about them? He also got annoyed at me because I laughed when he said he was writing Winnie the Pooh. Didn't mean it negatively, but it's just a funny thing.

I'm pretty sure i remember him waiting on me at Kim's Video, and absolutely living up to the stereotype there.

Did Tarantino punch your mom in the boob, Morbs?

i watched queen of earth, has something in common w enter the void in that its title card is the best thing abt it

& truthfully that is too harsh, i didnt hate it but i also didnt think it totally worked. ive seen liz moss enough to know that shes a v good actress so i can only blame the writing, direction, etc for several of her scenes that fell p flat for me

Well, this is speculation, but I'm thinking a lot of the acting seems as if they're improvising, as did a lot of The Color Wheel to me. The acting, including that from Elizabeth Moss, is much more polished in Listen Up Philip, iirc.

that could be right idk.. some of the longer monologues have to be scripted i think

Has anyone seem Impolex? Is it available anywhere?

I've seen the other three. Enjoyed Color Wheel and Listen Up immensely, but I think QoE was a major step back.

Strange comedic horror music moments undercut the drama that was trying to develop

i saw Impolex and scratched my head.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

So anyone has new opinions on Queen of Earth? It's doing surprisingly well on end-of-year lists, I think, where I didn't see much of Listen Up Phillip last year.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I preferred a lot about Listen Up Philip but I can see why Queen of Earth would get more love. Polanski vibes really seem to be pushing him outside of his comfort zone.

Also it was less up-his-own-ass, unbelievably

Queen of Earth not yet out on disc so haven't seen it.

A.R.P. was sitting in front of me at a Rivette film the other night.

Queen of Earth crumbles in the last third but it's a watchable pastiche if you pretend it's a horror movie. I couldn't figure out who or what Patrick Fugit was playing.

I watched Listen Up Philip because of this thread and well, basically, fuck 9 of you. Even as a guy who will watch Schwarzman in just about anything, I couldn't finish it it was so pointless.

hated queen of earth so much

for a while I had some hope that it would have a happy ending like Melancholia, but no luck.

I watched Listen Up Philip because of this thread and well, basically, fuck 9 of you.

I told you not to! Movies about writers are clueless. An insufferable writer meeting another insufferable writer who says things like “Even looking at the girls here bring a cascade of emotions” and “The answer is at once arrogant and correct."

Haha yes

A.R.P. and his cinematographer showing up regularly to the Douglas Sirk retro here

Queen of Earth was watchable but it didn't have enough energy or something between the actors to really get over the hump to compelling.

i was really into it while I was watching it, loved the weird tension, the close-ups, and the way the sound design isolated and amplified certain sounds. But later i couldn't shake the feeling that ARP doesn't care even 1% about how mental health struggles play out in the world outside of movies. i say this knowing full well that it makes me a literalist bore calling for him to adopt a Stanley Kramer-esque strained seriousness, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Listen Up Philip was painful. I turned it off after 30 minutes. NY literary types being hateful and cunty blah blah blah

Kinda agree, but still his best. The grainy images were wonderful.

I liked it more than Queen of Earth but I definitely don't need to see another movie by this guy

He should do a sequel to the color wheel

I kinda want to see his Winnie the Pooh movie. Also, he's films will only ever be festival features in Scandinavia, so I'll probably check them out if there's free time in my schedule. I'm not a particularly big fan, but he's ok, and I like keeping up with directors.

The film reminded me of Greenberg but the characters in LUP were barely credible cardboard cutouts. Also for two writers, Pryce and Schwartzmann's characters never talked about their own writing or anyone elses

on his new ensemble film, Golden Exits, at Sundance (headed by Adam Horovitz and Chloë Sevigny)

http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/interview-alex-ross-perry/

Queen of Earth was tone-deaf about mental illness. I liked Listen Up, Philip though.

saw GOLDEN EXITS just now and really loved it. I've been curious about this guy for a while and I need to check out his other movies ASAP. this seems like a minor work maybe - very quiet, contemplative, with a skeletal story that might be all too familiar to some, but man, something about it just caught me. It looks beautiful too, wish I could've stuck around for the Q&A with Perry and his DP. super saturated and grainy, just gorgeous.

encouraging words

Her Smell strays noticeably outside of ARP’s normal comfort zone, in which people are reflexively, casually bruising and vicious to each other, superficially buttressing their uncalled-for hostility with an arsenal of choice words.

https://filmmakermagazine.com/105867-tiff-2018-critics-notebook-5-her-smell-rojo-a-faithful-man/#.W5f-SKknZBw

yeah I've really soured on this guy, and I think the title of his new movie is hilarious.

ugh, no more rock movies

the first 3 of the 5 acts are an endurance test

Raging Bull w/ Courtney Love archetype

Listen Up Philip was quite an endurance test

of course i dislike Opening Night too

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5955-alex-ross-perry-s-her-smell

queen of earth was so terrible

the rants Moss directs at her band sound like... Murry Wilson

Watched a 90-second clip on YouTube and based on that I’d want about $100 a minute to watch any more.

you'll miss her solo piano Bryan Adams cover, then

holy shit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoRVcsAEt0w

I’d watch e moss in just about anything

she said this was her first singing role since... and someone in the Lincoln Center audience yelled "Frosty Returns!"

Deep cut wow.

<I>Her Smell</I> made me ask: is there a worse working filmmaker than Alex Ross Perry?

he's so bad, he made me forget we use BBcode here

I've only seen Golden Exits and Her Smell, but I'm putting a priority on watching the rest of his films asap to confirm my theory.

so much wrong in Her Smell but main problem is one that fells most fictional rock band movies: the music isn't there. the songs are why we care about people like Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain and Bowie. without the music, we're left with a bunch of trim and nothing to hang it on. it's why Velvet Goldmine and Last Days suck, and I'm Not There is amazing. even something like Walk the Line gets by because the songs are there.

Subbing the Roxy songs for Bowie's in Velvet Goldmine was a slick move imo.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BwKkmGCBLg4/

I saw this on Insta when I was baked and laughed for 20 minutes.

Anika Pyle of Katie Ellen and Alicia Bognanno from Bully wrote some of the music so I had hopes for that.

So did I, I don't know them but my brother is a big fan, and he was taken aback by how bad / completely anonymous, almost algorithmically generated the songs were.

Moss looks like she picked up a guitar for the first time a few weeks before shooting started. Her right hand is way out of position

No one knows how to play guitar in this movie

he moves into Stephen Kingland

https://variety.com/2019/film/news/alex-ross-perry-stephen-king-rest-stop-1203192545/

also he is making me pro-bully

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/alex-ross-perry-avengers-endgame-oscar-best-picture-1202130965/

Like you weren't already.

Not until the last drugstore has sold its last pill.

What a godawful piece.

xp After all, you didn't personally drain the gasoline out of the tank...

This is the most ghoulish conversation!

So unlike (apparently) a lot of people, I actively root for Disney’s success. I am really intrigued that Disney bought Fox. I am eager to see how many of the top 10 grossing films of the year Disney puts out. I have a lot of friends there at the executive and producer level, and I want the best for them.

Fuck you!

I can get behind a defense of Avengers as a work of art that deserves the BP Oscar, but being "intrigued" by Disney acquiring Fox? this guy is a fucking idiot

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords

If you don't support Disney's total monopolistic domination, it's bullying.

the way of all Kim's Video employees

When people dismissively bemoan “the state of things” culturally and use Marvel/Disney dominance as their primary target, all I can see is a square, flat-topped father drinking a beer in a barca lounger while the game is on, telling his son to quit playing guitar/painting/writing/reading comic books/daydreaming and get a real job.

Oh my god, we don't live in a binary of SPORTS vs. NERDS!

he's from Bryn Mawr so

An eloquent defense of those quirky, subversive, creative, outside-the-mainstream Marvel films that so many squares want to ban

it's more like the SPORTS guys took the NERDS' stuff and made a bajillion dollars out of it

This guy is not making a good case for my checking out one of his movies. Nor is titling one of them Her Smell.

the title is the only good thing about it

Her smell is the first one of his I have no desire to see. Maybe because the story seems so familiar and I don’t buy e Moss in this role

Didn't Juliette Lewis basically make this same movie 10 years ago?

that indiewire piece reads like a poorly executed satire of film popism

Tarantino is awful but having read this I have to take issue with the thread title

Heard a number of variations of this argument IRL this past weekend from otherwise-reasonable people and they honestly made me sad.

It’s hard for me to empathize with the person who feels lost in a world where the biggest show in the history of television stars dragons

a dominant group obsessed with its own imagined victimhood? how weird

avengers: ressentiment

I watched Her Smell on Kanopy and -- while I agree it was probably not a film that needed to be made -- I cried! I think it paints a portrait of a person who people can easily write off as a monster as a real person. I'm sure it could have been BETTER but that doesn't usually determine whether or not I liked a movie. I found it scary and emotionally resonant (when she's singing to her kid? cmon that's touching) and my only real complaint is that I couldn't hear the dialogue very well because everyone is hissing at each other through the first hour and there's tons of noise from the noisy club (as there often is). I also thought Virginia Madsen was really good as the mom. Dan Stevens was uninspiring as the former husband and Eric Stoltz is as creepy as he always is.

I have yet to determine why it's called Her Smell but I kind of like the title. The band name leaves something to be desired but I like the idea of a movie about Her Smell.

Listen Up, Philip is unwatchable except for Elisabeth Moss.