In many people’s eyes, being a film critic might be a pretty frivolous enterprise. I’ll admit that watching a movie for two hours with a box of popcorn and taking notes before picking apart their artistic merits doesn’t exactly rank up with breaking Watergate-level scandals in terms of journalistic importance.
But sometimes, a film comes along that’s either really great and in danger of being overlooked because it’s released through a small distributor. And other times, even a big-budget studio is so godawful that a critic’s warning against seeing it becomes a public service announcement.
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We’ve got both scenarios going this week, as the $42 million kung-fu/sci-fi Western (aka, a bloody mess) The Warrior’s Way is still lurking in theaters waiting to separate undiscriminating film-goers from their hard-earned money. Meanwhile, indie gem Tiny Furniture is building a huge cult following and Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale offers wicked fun with what might be the most insane Santa Claus movie ever.
Starring Asian superstar Dong-gun Jang in his first American movie, The Warrior’s Way follows the story of Yang, a samurai assigned to kill a baby, but who experiences a change of heart and instead escapes to America with the infant. He winds up in a desert town that just happens to be the home base of the freaks in a traveling circus, and despite trying to become peaceful, Yang is soon forced to fight both the other samurai who cross the ocean to pursue him and a nasty bunch of Civil War veterans that are terrorizing the circus folk.
This movie has it all – an incomprehensible plot that climaxes in an unending, confusing, bloody final battle mixing villainous soldiers on horses, thousands of samurai dropping out of space (yes, space!!) at just the right moment, garish visuals, awful music, and a performance by Kate Bosworth that’s so bad and unhinged it’ll either be a career-killer, qualify her for mental-health aid, or both. Even if you’re an action fan starved for some ass-kicking entertainment amid the highfalutin’ Oscar season, watching The Warrior’s Way will feel more like Abu Ghraib-style torture than a fun night at the movies. It’s not just the year’s worst film, it’s the decade’s.
Nearly as crazy but in all the right ways is the Finnish film Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, which turns the Santa Claus story upside-down, shakes it around and completely re-imagines the jolly old man as an evil creature with giant horns who loves to kidnap children rather than leaving them presents. A young boy named Pietar finds an ancient book that features terrifying woodcut images of the horn-having Santa kidnapping and killing children, just as a Western team of miners is blowing open a giant mountain just outside of Pietar’s rural town.
What Pietar comes to realize is that his town had captured and trapped the evil Santa long ago and built the mountain atop him to keep him there forever. The miners have figured this out too and want to be the ones who prove once and for all that Santa exists, although they don’t realize that he’s actually a giant demonic-looking monster.
Meanwhile, creepy naked old men (don’t worry, no full-frontal except in a quick, distant shower scene) are popping up in the snow around town as the miners and the town’s children are starting to disappear. Pietar has to convince his father about the twisted reality of what’s going on and beg him to gather his friends for a final battle royale against the miners and naked men (aka Santa’s helpers) while putting Santa back under wraps.
Rare Exports is a one-of-a-kind film whose internal logic makes all the oddball scenarios add up successfully. The fact that it’s Finnish cast is fresh to American eyes helps add believability at key moments, while the absolutely stunning scenery of the country’s sweeping mountain vistas is a marvel to behold and the score is perfect at every moment. Rare might be an acquired taste, but should become a perennial Christmas favorite for cult-movie fans.
Finally, Tiny Furniture is a gem that works with human-scaled quirks. Directed, written by, and starring fresh talent Lena Dunham – who cast her real-life mother and sister as her character’s mother and sister – it follows the misadventures of a fresh college graduate named Aura, who moves back in with her mom and teen sister as she tries to figure out what to do with her pointless liberal-arts degree.
Bouncing between dating disasters, a dead-end restaurant job, and the trouble she gets into with her best friend and a guy who’ll share a bed with her but will absolutely not let her touch him, the micro-budgeted Tiny (which cost $25,000 to shoot and $25,000 for editing and post-production) makes the most of its simple charms to craft a tale that will remind viewers of Woody Allen at his neurotic New York best. Dunham scores in each of her positions with the film and marks herself as a talent to watch. If you find the embarrassment of others to be hilarious fun, Tiny should be a big part of your entertainment plans.