For the week of May 29th, the Criterion Collection is bringing Terry Zwigoff's classic comedy Ghost World to Blu-ray. Adapted from Daniel Clowes's graphic novel, Ghost World tends to be one of those comic-book adaptations that those who tire of superheroes and world domination can enjoy. Its protagonists are Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson, years before she'd play an actual superhero), two teenage best friends who wage a not-so-secret campaign of sarcasm and contempt against the quotidian miseries of their suburban lives. Their weapons? Sarcasm and passive aggression and delivered in a fairly constant stream. Ever since his great documentary Crumb, Zwigoff has always been a champion of the bitter, and he fixes that same attention here, albeit with one significant kick: I had no idea he could be so nuanced and precise when detailing the inner lives of teenage girls. The ways Enid and Rebecca taunt hipster record clerks (personified by the great Pat Healy) or the one boy their age (Brad Renfro) who's too defeated to do anything more than just absorb their taunts are to be expected from Zwigoff; he also nails the secret language of in-jokes and codes that teenage girls of a certain age use to process the world around them. It helps, too, that his leading ladies are so good; still teenagers themselves, Birch and Johansson are engaging enough to retain our sympathies without needing to soften any of the misanthropy they shed (Birch, in particular, deserves special mention – you watch this and wonder why she didn't become a Greta Gerwig-level indie queen). For about forty-five minutes, Ghost World plays like one of the great American comedies, but then the girls find themselves drawn into the orbit of lonely record collector Seymour (Steve Buscemi), and the whole tone shifts. The latter half of the film isn't bad, but the humor gives way to something darker once Enid begins to confront her own misery and pain. Zwigoff scores some lovely observations about growing up – it ends on a wonderfully ambiguous note, and Buscemi shines playing what is, for him, almost a romantic lead – yet I kept wishing he could have done so without leeching all the humor away. Vide his great 2003 comedy Bad Santa, which is just as insightful, and it remains funny all the way. Still, Ghost World remains a bracing look at American culture, albeit an uneven one.
In his Blu-ray review, Svet Atanasov wrote that "the film has an interesting dual identity that at times can be a bit tricky to defend. One part of it focuses on the existence that social outcasts in America were forced to endure before the explosion of social media. Ghost World is actually a very appropriate title for it because most of these people were essentially ghosts that only occasionally stepped into the real world where 'normal' people had normal lives and relationships. So when Enid and Rebecca encounter Seymour, a classic social outcast, the film begins comparing what it looks and feels like to be on both sides of the barrier that separates the ghost world and the real world. This is the better of the two parts that offers some quite interesting food for thought (the segments with the seemingly invisible old man that patiently waits for the canceled bus to show up are particularly good). In the other part there is an obvious desire to be funny in the same way some of Sam Mendes, Kevin Smith and Todd Solondz's films are. In other words, there are a number of gotcha moments that add a special flavor to the narrative. The trouble here is that quite a few of them are too carefully timed and instead of being effective because they are spontaneous, more often than not they actually look and feel incredibly artificial (the two segments with the kooky guy in the convenience store are prime examples). The cast is mostly good. Buscemi is clearly in an entirely different league, however, and it also easily shows that he is a lot more comfortable with his character."
Even better is Billy Wilder's hyperkinetic 1961 farce One, Two, Three. When people think of the screwball comedies Wilder made over his storied career, they generally tend to point to Some Like It Hot or The Seven Year Itch as his grand exemplars. That's a shame – as iconic as the two are, they can't hold a candle to One, Two, Three, which ranks as one of the five or six funniest films ever made. This time around, Wilder and his brilliant screenwriting partner I.A.L. Diamond are satirizing both Cold War-era tensions and American capitalism, and doing so through the increasingly hectic life of C.R. MacNamara (Jimmy Cagney). Mac is climbing the executive ladder in Coca Cola's West Berlin branch, and he's thisclose to cementing his fortunes, but when his boss's daughter (the wonderfully ditzy Pamela Tiffin) falls in love with a Communist from East Berlin (Horst Buchholz), Mac sees his corporate ambitions put in peril. The general outlines of what transpires are classic farce – in trying to convert Buchholz's character to the joys of capitalism, Mac begins scheming in ways that would impress John Cleese in Fawlty Towers - but the execution is anything but. Wilder pushes this material into overdrive: in terms of sheer velocity alone, One, Two, Three merits comparison with Howard Hawks's His Girl Friday. Jokes pile on top of jokes – we've easily got a movie-and-a-half of material packed into just under two hours – culminating in a third act that plays like the Marx Brothers on Benzedrine. And the on-screen ringleader of all this madness is Cagney, giving maybe his best performance in a career loaded with great ones. Cagney makes the act of thinking exciting, and when Mac's rattling off schemes and trying to save his own skin, he does so with an abandon that's as unpredictable as anything Tom Powers or Cody Jarrett ever managed. The story goes – and it's probably apocryphal, but who cares? – that playing Mac so exhausted Cagney he didn't take another role until 1981's Ragtime, but I like to think it was because he knew he'd never get a part this good again. Highly, highly recommended.
Of One, Two, Three, Brian Orndorf wrote that " Cagney is built for this type of role, and while the picture is largely considered the reason for the screen legend's 20 year break from performing...he's perfectly suited for the velocity Wilder is aiming to achieve, ordering the cast to hustle through every scene like they're strapped to bombs that detonate around silence. One, Two, Three is a loud film, as the ensemble is tasked with playing to the back row, as through Wilder imagines the production playing to theater audiences, not moviegoers. It's difficult to dismiss the speed of the feature, as it works to create a tornado of absurdity that keeps Mac on the move, putting out fires and managing his own life, which includes a troubled marriage and a mistress. Adding to pressures are the locals, with German employees still struggling to lose their Nazi identity and training. One, Two, Three remains busy and it's exhausting to watch, but the timing of the effort is impressive, especially when Wilder never throttles the endeavor, refusing to position a break in the action."
Finally, Warner and New Line Home Entertainment are bringing Fist Fight to Blu-ray. Let's begin by damming this one with faint praise. Of star Charlie Day's recent big-screen comedies (the Horrible Bosses pictures; the recent National Lampoon's Vacation reboot), Fist Fight is the best. The story of a high-school English teacher (Day) trying to escape a fight with an unhinged History teacher (Ice Cube), Fist Fight is short (under ninety minutes before end credits), narratively concise (there's a real unity of time here, as we follow Day's beleaguered high-school teacher from the beginning of the school day through the end), and reasonably funny, with people like Day, Jillian Bell, Kumail Nanjiani, and the great Tracy Morgan scoring one or two good laughs before the end. The humor might skew towards graphic descriptions of genitals and what goes in and out of them, but again, see aforementioned short runtime. Plus, director Richie Keen helms one terrific sequence – the end brawl between Day and Cube (spoilers, I guess, for a movie with "Fist" and "Fight" in the title) plays like the comedy version of the famous They Live fight. Yet the end result still feels vaguely dispiriting, and I attribute that sensation to a bigger issue plaguing mainstream American comedies: we don't let our funny people live up to their fullest potential. Day is responsible for creating the breakout character on the most breathtakingly nihilistic television sitcom since Seinfeld; Bell stole Workaholics right out from that series' ostensible leads; Nanjiani is killing it every week on Silicon Valley; and Morgan is a national treasure; but in Fist Fight, they get one or two notes to play and nothing more. Day is manic, Bell is horny, Nanjiani is officious, and Morgan is truculent. Sure, each person hits these notes well, but we don't get any of the complexity of their best roles. Ironically, Breaking Bad's Dean Norris ends up stealing the film as the school's defeated principal, and it's because he uses his character actor's grace to give the part more nuance than we'd expect. I blame the vagaries of the entertainment industry. Most of Fist Fight's stars work in television, so they spend the majority of the year on something like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and then have the summers to shoot a movie. The problem is, the pickings are awfully slim by then. It's the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler conundrum: they would reinvent the American sitcom with 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation, and then they'd sign up for mediocre programmers like Admission or Baby Mama. So it goes with the Fist Fight crew. If you like them, you won't hate the movie, but you will be counting down to something more worth their time.
Michael Reuben noted that "director Keen builds to the climactic showdown with a series of increasingly far-fetched diversions, many of them involving Roosevelt's demented faculty, in which Tracy Morgan's Coach Crawford may be the most normal person, as compared to the knife-wielding drama teacher (Christina Hendricks, Mad Men) and the borderline pedophile/stalker of a guidance counselor (Jillian Bell, Workaholics). Occasional moments of genuine levity break through, usually from supporting actors who are smart enough to underplay, like Silicon Valley's Kumail Nanjiani as a persnickety school guard, but the film could have used more absurdist touches like the mariachi band that wanders the halls, ultimately accompanying the titular fight with a familiar pugilistic theme. Fist Fight makes token stabs at conveying a message about learning to stand up for oneself against bullies, whether of the physical kind like Strickland or the institutional variety like Principal Tyler. But the film's true sympathies lie with the sniggering adolescents tearing up Roosevelt High, who don't stand for anything except juvenile rebellion...The incongruity is supposed to be hilarious, but by this point Fist Fight has already worn out linguistic shock effects so thoroughly that it's just unpleasant."