Triple Play

An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn (2018)

Starring Craig Robinson as the title character Beverly Luff Linn and Aubrey Plaza as Lulu Danger, Jim Hoskin’s An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn repeatedly made me ask, “Why was this film made?” I’ve yet to come up with a satisfactory answer.

I like Aubrey Plaza whose usual deadpan style only strengthens the emotional moments in her screen roles. I like that she is willing to take chances with offbeat characters, which has paid off nicely in films such as Safety Not Guaranteed, Ingrid Goes West, and even (to a degree) Life after Beth. But they wouldn’t be “chances” if they didn’t sometimes turn up snake eyes. This time was craps (final “s” optional). The problem was not Aubrey or the other actors. It was the material.

I also like “quirky” when done right. Wes Anderson has a habit of doing it right, but he didn’t make this film. This film was a ham-handed attempt at quirky. A movie is not automatically artistic or amusing just because it has characters who talk oddly, behave weirdly, and dance awkwardly.

Plot: Lulu Danger is married to the total jerk (and thief) Shane (Emile Hirsch). In the company of would-be errant knight Colin (Jemaine Clement), Lulu leaves Shane. Lulu and Colin stop in a hotel where Beverly Luff Linn (a fellow with whom Lulu has an unresolved history) will be giving a performance. Beverly’s assistant (Matt Berry) is in love with Beverly. The relationships shake themselves out over a few days. That’s pretty much it, which in the right hands could be enough. The wrong hands were at work here.

In fairness to the filmmakers. I’ll mention that the positive critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes are 52% and 56% respectively, though I can’t imagine what those slight majorities saw in it. Whatever it was, I missed it.

Thumbs Down.

**** ****

The Conspiracy against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror

by Thomas Ligotti

The plots, themes, and characters of every fiction writer are informed by that that writer’s philosophy and world view, acknowledged or otherwise. Joss Whedon comes to mind for reasons that will be obvious in the next segment. He rather famously infuses his scripts with existentialist notions about choices: about how we always have them (even if none are good) and about how our choices ultimately are who we are. (If you look closely in one episode of Buffy, you may notice the character Angel reading Sartre’s La Nausée.) Ligotti is a very good writer of especially creepy horror fiction. In 2010 he decided to be explicit about his own philosophy and how it relates to his fiction in The Conspiracy against the Human Race. Last year he published an updated new edition of the book. Ligotti is a philosophical pessimist, Schopenhauer being the best known proponent though Ligotti references many.

To the extent that Pessimism as a coherent philosophy has something to offer beyond “realism,” it is the observation that if you always expect the worst you won’t be much disappointed. There are some who find that comforting. Pessimists view life as a painful experience that inevitably ends in death. They argue that our struggle against death (even though it offers escape from pain) is merely an inherited instinct that makes no sense but is nonetheless real. Existence is accidental and without any inherent meaning. Consciousness is regarded as a catastrophe since it allows humans (unlike most creatures) to be fully aware of pain, anxiety, and mortality. People distract themselves from the awful realities with fantasies of “meaning,” with intoxicants, with physical or intellectual activities, and with made-up romantic notions. Ligotti quotes William S. Burroughs: “Love? What is it? The most natural painkiller there is.” (Woody Allen, another pessimist, said something similar in Annie Hall.)

Ligotti gives us a run-down on the evolution of various forms of horror fiction and tells us how they generate frisson by turning our eyes to the terrible while simultaneously distracting us from the terrible in real life.

Ligotti’s vision is not mine, but I do understand it. It is an interesting take on horror fiction in general and on his own in particular. Overall, though, I’d recommend his fiction itself rather than his analysis of it.

Thumbs cautiously and modestly Up.

**** ****

Buffy the Vampire Slayer No. 1: Buffy Summers (2019)

Story by Jordie Bellaire, illustrated by Dan Mora, created by Joss Whedon.

Into the life of every long-lived comic book character must come the reboot. This happens quickly and repeatedly for characters intended to be a particular age (e.g. the teenager Peter Parker), but eventually it happens to all. One can’t very well have a geriatric Batman, after all. Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a longer first run than most. The TV show lasted for 7 seasons starting in the spring of 1997. It was followed by 5 more “seasons” (elsewhere known as volumes) of comic books that didn’t come out every year. The Season 12 grand finale (The Reckoning) was published late in 2018. The timeline of the comics is not the same as for our world (i.e. not the same as the publication dates), but in Season 12 Buffy says she is age 30, which makes the year 2011 for the events in the comic. That date is too long ago and the protagonist is too adult for the series’ target demographic. Time for new boots.

Fans of any original series always have trepidation about a reboot. This is especially so in recent years when our socio-political divisions have infiltrated our popular culture to a degree that can impede (or replace) good storytelling, and all too often do. Older fans can relax: Buffy No. 1 is a suitably good yarn. Buffy is back again in Sunnydale High at age 16, but in the year 2019. The familiar cast of characters is back, albeit with some differences as one expects in a reboot, such as Anya already running the magic shop.

Older fans might question some of the changes. Buffy, for example, has her act more together than in her 1997 incarnation. The whole theme of the original series is about growing up and (in an unsubtle metaphor) about fighting one’s demons in the process, so 1997 Buffy is full of promise but as yet literally sophomoric. 2019 Buffy is savvier, but she is still fundamentally teen Buffy with plenty of room to grow, so the original theme presumably is not thrown entirely out the window. The biggest change is to Willow. Willow grows more over the course of the TV series than any other character, Buffy included; in 1997 she starts out painfully self-conscious, nerdy, and shy but develops (despite some lapses into bad behavior) into the most formidable of Buffy’s allies. 2019 teenage Willow, on the other hand, already is self-assured and apparently already settled in her orientation, too. As that may be, the point of the reboot is not to satisfy old fans but to win new ones who are themselves experiencing the hellmouth that is high school. It should succeed at that. The new fans won’t be aware of the changes unless they choose to visit the original series, which finished its TV run before most of them were born.

I won’t be buying No.2 (this reboot is definitely not aimed at me) but Thumbs Up nonetheless.

Trailer for An Evening with Beverly Luff Lin