Creep; Diner-Style Buttermilk Pancakes

Creep (2014)

Director: Patrick Brice

Had I seen this before: Yes

There are many morality tales about the importance of showing kindness to strangers--maybe that beggar in rags is secretly an angel, testing your generosity; maybe that hunched old woman is really a beautiful sorceress with a penchant for punishing superficiality. Maybe it's actually just a fellow human, down on their luck and deserving of care. But there is another, more popular category of story that serves as a warning--don't be so trusting, so agreeable, so gullible or it might spell your doom. So when someone asks you for help but you feel uneasy about it, it can be difficult to tell what exactly it is underlying your discomfort: is it selfishness, laziness, prejudice, callousness--or just a spark of self-preservation? 

Creep is a low-budget found-footage-style movie in a category that I would describe as "politeness horror," or more specifically in this case "compassion horror." I find this genre almost unbearably effective because it raises a question that I ask myself all the time, namely: How weird would things have to get before I overcame my anxiety about overreacting or hurting someone's feelings in order to extract myself from a bad situation? Could I inadvertently people-please my way into a cult or a serial killer's lair? If you have ever thought to yourself "Oh no I definitely would have helped Ted Bundy load that furniture" or "It's possible I would let myself get murdered out of fear of being called a Karen if I made a fuss," then you probably understand why watching someone else try to navigate these questions can be so compelling.

The navigator in this case is Aaron (Patrick Brice), a freelance videographer who is on his way to a vaguely-described but well-paying job that he found on Craigslist. One day of video services, $1000, "discretion appreciated." Maybe it's a lonely, sexy 40-something woman looking to have fun with a young videographer, he muses as he makes his way to the isolated cabin. Oh, buddy. That would be a really different movie. When he arrives, deep in the California woods, he knocks briskly on the door, to no response. Tries the doorbell. Calls the number listed in the ad. No answer, no voicemail. This is the first of a few significant potential off-ramps for Aaron, although of course he does not realize it yet and has no reason to think it's worth abandoning a potential payday. He decides to wait in the car, where he is soon startled by the very sudden appearance of Josef (Mark Duplass) at his window. When he gets out, Josef expresses immense enthusiasm for the day ahead of them and immediately gives Aaron a huge bear hug. "Let's just do this now, because at the end of the day, it's going to be so normal. Trust me, that's not...anything weird at all." Wildly reassuring, Joe. I should probably point out that this film, co-written/largely improvised by the two stars and directed by the man playing Aaron, started life as a psychological black comedy before being shaped into more of a horror narrative, and that comedy DNA is thankfully still apparent throughout.

Once in the house, Josef explains that he has been diagnosed with a brain tumor and given two to three months to live, and that his plan today is to record a video diary for his still-in-utero child. He mentions that the brain tumor has caused some "cognitive misfirings," low-key laying the groundwork for explaining away some of his oddity. Aaron, a nice person, of course agrees to help him and is immediately punished with another hug. He is also paid up front, in cash. I am not yet yelling "Aaron, no!" at the screen, but that time is nigh, my friends. Josef gives a little speech that makes him come across as a very earnest, somewhat socially awkward guy. He then gives Aaron a high five, says "Okay! I'm gonna go get in the tub," and dashes upstairs. And thus we have reached OFF-RAMP #2.

Here seems like a good time to talk about why the casting makes this movie work better than you might think from the bare outline of the story. The fact that Aaron and Josef are ostensibly on a level playing field in terms of power in this relationship--both white guys in their thirties, on the handsome side of average, seemingly physically fit--means there are almost no complicating factors beyond the basic question of social/moral/ethical pressure in an uncertain situation. Their only connection is a pretty casual verbal agreement for a minor, one-day job. There is some financial imbalance--the money is obviously why Aaron stays in the beginning, although at some point it moves well beyond that. But Patrick Brice absolutely towers over Mark Duplass, so in theory Aaron has the upper hand in terms of brute strength. (When I first saw this movie my takeaway was that Mark Duplass was shorter than I thought, but what I have discovered in today's research is that Patrick Brice is six foot six.) Which is all to say that while I, a not particularly strong middle-aged woman, would probably have drawn the line at this point because staying would clearly be more uncomfortable than leaving, I can accept that Aaron, a giant of a man in the prime of his life, follows him up the stairs. But I'm not happy about it.

There he finds Josef undressing and running a bath, explaining that when he was young he had "Tubby Time" with his father and he wants to recreate that experience for his unborn child since he won't have a chance to do it in person. Now, I know that what I just typed out is objectively demented. But you have to understand that Mark Duplass is absolutely incredible in this film at threading the needle between "sad person" and "dangerous person." The entire movie is a game of "sad person or dangerous person?" And because there are probably a lot more of the former in this world than the latter, I understand why Aaron consistently makes the empathetic judgment calls that he does. In this case, agreeing to film an absolutely excruciating edition of Tubby Time.

Things continue to alternate between bizarre and solemnly heartfelt--there is a very upsetting wolf mask called Peachfuzz that pairs with an incongruously happy story about childhood, then an overly long trek through the woods in search of a pool of "miracle water" said to have healing properties. At this point I was forced to ask myself if I would rather be lost in the woods with Josef or the Blair Witch and...it's a tough call but at least the Blair Witch doesn't seem like a hugger. At one point Josef carves J + A with a heart around it onto a rock. Then, at Josef's suggestion, they go to a diner called Billy Bear's, where Josef eats pancakes and pressures Aaron to tell him about something he's done that he's really ashamed of. Aaron, the people-pleaser, complies with a sympathy-inducing story about wetting his pants as a child. Josef reciprocates by showing Aaron a bunch of stealthy creep shots he took of him when he first arrived at the cabin. I'm going to call this OFF-RAMP #2.5 because Aaron is far away from his own vehicle but he is in a public place with phones and such.

When they return to the cabin, it is dark out, and Aaron says "I think...I think I'm gonna head back," because he recognizes that this is OFF-RAMP #3. He agreed to one day of video services, and he has gone above and beyond in providing such. But Josef wants Aaron to come back inside for a whiskey, "to commemorate our day." And after a little more wheedling, Aaron, the nice person, agrees.

There is almost half of the movie left at that point, and things...well, they don't go uphill. But for almost the entire runtime I truly did not know which direction things were going to go, overall. Don't creepy weirdos also deserve compassion? Aaron thinks so! And that's why Aaron is the best. He's such a sympathetic protagonist, even when you are yelling "NO!" at him--which, by the way, I highly recommend doing with company. The first time I saw this with my friend Alex we talked through each escalating scenario while also glancing nervously at the darkened windows around us and it was basically a perfect viewing experience. Which is why this write-up is in honor of her birthday, by request--a thing which, based on my average view counts, is probably a service that I can offer to any dedicated reader so...you know, hit me up.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "The...tub?"

Is it under two hours: Yes

In conclusion: Happy birthday, Alex!

Diner-Style Buttermilk Pancakes from Epicurious

Just a warm stack of Billy Bear's famous pancakes, perfect for a chill hang with your best bud.

Now You See Me, Now You See Me 2; Macanese Minchee

Now You See Me (2013) and Now You See Me 2 (2016)

Directors: Louis Leterrier; Jon M. Chu

Had I seen these before: No

"The closer you look the less you'll see." This is the mantra of the first film in the Now You See Me series, a terrifically-premised couple of movies about magicians who use the tricks of the trade to Robin Hood money away from unsavory people and distribute it to those who have either been wronged financially or happen to be standing on the streets of London. The phrase opens the movie and is repeated a few times throughout. It's the kind of thing that sounds smart and mysterious, especially before the action gets going and you aren't quite sure yet how events are going illustrate this thesis. It's also the kind of thing that, when revisited at the end of the movie, made me wonder...are we sure this means anything at all? Or is it just the catchphrase equivalent of a sparkly outfit and a handful of flash paper, giving us the ol' razzle dazzle so we don't notice the emptiness at its core? Is it, in fact, more of a plea--don't peek too closely at the impressive cast and stylish set pieces or you might realize it's just an old Kansan grifter pulling levers behind the curtain?

Each of these movies is, in fact, a pile of jumbled half-nonsense wearing the shiny costume of a clever movie, and here's the thing: I'm not mad about it. The fact that they manage to have the cadence of intelligent dialogue is its own impressive feat. I don't think these movies are bad, I just think they're kind of dumb, and also that there is a place for pleasantly dumb, glittery movies in a well-balanced cinema diet. I want to be absolutely clear that if they ever make Now You See Me 3 I will be watching it, popcorn in my hands and sequins in my eyes. Things that I like: close-up magic, loud announcers letting me know that I am at an event, shiny things, spotlights, double crosses, secret identities, people faking their deaths, Lizzy Caplan, movies where Daniel Radcliff is revealed to be a cheerfully insane villain, being given the ol' hocus pocus, flim flam flummox, double whammy, and/or three-ring circus. Who needs coherence when you have all that?

My journey with the first movie is illustrated by the state of my notes, which started off fairly detailed and then dropped precipitously once I realized there was really no point in trying to track all the details. By the second movie I had adjusted my brain down to the correct level and was just swimming through a sea of pure abracadabra vibes, which is probably why I enjoyed the second movie a bit more despite the fact that it makes even less sense. Nevertheless, this means that I am able to give you the particulars of the opening of the first film, typed up intently with the confidence of someone who is absolutely certain that it will eventually all be falling into place like so many tumblers in a combination lock.

The movie opens with someone performing a card trick straight to camera, which is really effective--he hesitates a near-imperceptible amount of time on a certain card as he shuffles them all past you so that you, like the mark in the movie, have that card in mind for the rest of the trick. It's skillfully done and I am already amped. The character performing this is a David Blaine-style street magician played by Jesse Eisenberg, and by describing my notes as "fairly detailed" earlier I did not mean "including a single character's name," just to be clear. Eisenberg, smooth and snarky and kind of a dick, is playing against type here--haha, just kidding, this role is platonically Eisenbergian. Which, again, is fine with me, I kind of enjoy his whole deal--at one point in the film someone makes a crack about magicians not getting laid and he has a low-key "whatever you need to tell yourself dude" expression that is honestly very funny. He is starting to hook up with the woman on the other end of said card trick when he discovers a mysterious tarot card--The Lover--that doubles as an invitation. Hook up canceled! Secret magic society calling! Eisenberg snark on the way out the door! So far so good.

Okay, now to round up the other three. Woody Harrelson is performing as a hypnotist for tourists at what seems to be some sort of resort. His actual grift is blackmailing a cheating husband by revealing compromising information to his hypnotized wife and then promising to wipe her memory if he pays up. Ethically....uh....pretty gray area with this one. Also, Harrelson's main skill--hypnosis--is basically superpower-level, which is something you just have to get on board with or these movies are truly untenable. He receives a card similar to Eisenberg's, except his is The Hermit. He was just performing in a very public place, but okay. Different kind of hermit, maybe. Next up, Dave Franco is on a ferry bending spoons but actually stealing wallets. For some reason this bothers me less than Harrelson's thing. He gets the Death card. We don't know it yet but his main skill is throwing playing cards really really hard. No I am not kidding. Last but not least is Isla Fisher, performing a Houdini-type water escape that almost killed her in real life. Knowing that story before watching this scene made it incredibly stressful. She gets The Priestess, because she is a girl.

The four meet up as per the instructions on their cards at a sort of magic-booby-trapped location and then we fast forward to the future, where they are performing together in Vegas under the name The Four Horsemen, to a huge and boisterous crowd. The name of the group is another example of something that sounds sort of good on first blush but actually doesn't mean anything, other than the fact that there are four of them. They are neither equestrians nor apocalyptic entities, at least in the first two movies. There are just...four of them. One of whom is not a man. (One of the reasons I like the second movie is that Lizzy Caplan, who replaces Isla Fisher, gets some fun meta lines like the deadpan "I'm the girl Horseman.") Michael Caine is there, I believe in a bankrolling capacity. They perform a trick that involves stealing money from a Parisian bank vault and scattering in amongst the Las Vegas audience. At this point, the presence of both seemingly impossible magic and Michael Caine forces one to ask, is this a Prestige situation where there is something that is not an illusion but is in fact deeply messed up happening? But it is not, at least not regarding this specific trick, although the question of whether there is real magic in this universe is...frankly unclear to me to this day.

They are soon joined by Morgan Freeman, playing a famous debunker, and Mark Ruffalo, playing a deeply incompetent FBI agent. OR ARE THEY? These movies have a lot of twists and reveals and I will just say that the first big reveal in Movie One made me frown and say "Sure...I guess?" and then every subsequent reveal, once the crucial brain-adjusting had taken place, engendered a calm "why not" sort of nod. I was at peace with the reveals. I was one with the twists. "Show me more tricks with pigeons," I would say serenely. 

Anyway. My pitch for the second movie is that Dan Radcliff says "You may not be having fun but I am" and I think he is literally talking to the audience, and that Woody Harrelson plays his own twin brother by wearing a wig and bright white teeth and doing an Owen Wilson impression. The MacGuffin in that one is basically the same as the one in Sneakers, a legitimately good movie that is mostly cogent. No one is who you think they are, except some people, who are.

Line I repeated quietly to myself and will likely try to use in the future: "Was that an act of God? No, that was an act...of me."

Is it under two hours: The first one is just under, the second just over

Did I understand the plan: Absolutely not and I hope I never will

Easy Macanese Minchee from What to Cook Today

Okay to be fully honest the only reason I watched the second movie was that no one eats anything in the first movie and I could not come up with any magic-themed food. No one really eats in the second movie either, but lucky for me The Four Horsepeople do slide down a long tube and get dumped in a restaurant in Macau, from whence this minchee recipe originates.

.

Up next: A birthday special request which is not a heist movie, unless you consider Mark Duplass craftily stealing my full attention for 77 minutes a heist

The Thomas Crown Affair; Pan-Seared Fish with Tomatoes and Capers over Rice Pilaf

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)

Director: John McTiernan

Had I seen this before: No

The biggest advantage to creating content that no one asked for is probably the ability to surrender to the occasional bout of Pierce Brosnan-induced writers block without fear of consequence. There is, unfortunately, no one to fire me from this gig. I can't even figure out how to get comments to work on here, which means you would have to go to the trouble of contacting me through a different medium in order to tell me to either work harder or to quit entirely, a degree of effort beyond the motivation level of either my supporters or my haters. All of which means that I watched the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair about a month ago, made a somewhat elaborate meal to accompany it, then abandoned the blinking cursor because for whatever reason I didn't feel like writing about this movie. And, judging by this opening paragraph of feet draggery, I still don't.

Thomas Crown is a very handsome and wealthy man who is bored by what an alpha he is. I believe he has more or less the same job as Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, except here we are meant to be impressed rather than repulsed by its heartless capitalist nature. His bottomless resource pool means that he has access to the type of equipment that essentially makes him Batman, but instead of fighting crime in a legally/ethically murky fashion, he uses it to waste everyone else's time because that is fun for him, as a sociopath. We the audience are rooting for him because he is played by Pierce Brosnan and the movie keeps indicating that we should be doing so. Also, our alternative is Dennis Leary.

Obviously what has happened here is that I made the fatal mistake of approaching a 24-year-old movie with a great deal of confidence that I would enjoy it. I know better than to do this! And yet. Here is a movie that I certainly would have liked at the time of its release but find to have aged a bit sourly, the exact feeling I was braced for when watching The Italian Job and surprised not to find therein. And now I've taken this slightly soured film out of storage and left it on the counter of my brain for multiple weeks, where it has started to grow mold and give off a sort of...odor.

The actual heisting elements of the film are pretty good. It's fun to use a Trojan horse to sneak into a building, although I worry about the educational level of the American public if anyone working at any building is like "sure, I'll sign for this giant horse no one ordered." Doomed to repeat, etc. It's amusing to watch what are clearly enormous hired thugs pretend to be docents. It's interesting to observe Thomas Crown interrupting the heist that he staged with his own secret mini-heist, although I believe this was also the point of no return in terms of my ability to overlook his many glaring personality flaws. It's one thing to be a soulless, bloodsucking captain of whatever in the normal course of the late-90s finance industry, but here he has hired undocumented laborers under false pretenses for the sole purpose of setting them up to get arrested and remove attention from himself. That sucks! I know they are throw-away movie thugs, but it genuinely sucks! It is, however, undeniably impressive that as someone my exact current age he manages to drop to the floor and wriggle underneath a metal barrier without drawing a lot of attention to himself, a feat I am certainly not capable of at this time. Apparently I am in my prime heisting years and didn't even realize it. (Also my prime having sex on a large marble staircase years, but sneaking through museum security looked significantly more comfortable if I'm being honest.)

Crown is being pursued sort of listlessly by the police, represented by Dennis Leary and Frankie Faison, who is playing the only character I liked in this movie. He's a cop and he's not really doing his job especially well, but he's so cheerful in every scene. Crown is being pursued much more aggressively by Rene Russo, who, I feel I should point out, I absolutely love, playing a character who is a Late 90s Sexy Woman. Her hair is always artfully hovering 3/4 of an inch away from her scalp, as dictated by the gravity of the era. She wears tight clothes and is an ambitious, tough talking business dealer. She only consumes green juice and Pepsi One. She is thrilled by the hunt but also inexplicably intrigued by the fact that Pierce Brosnan destroys a sailboat for laughs. This is appealing, to Late 90s Sexy Woman. She values a man who has money and refuses to do anything even remotely useful with it. It's the late 90s, baby! The end of history!

The middle part of the movie has far too much sexy saxophone and yelling and crying and not nearly enough planning and heisting. Eventually, we get to the end, which goes pretty hard and almost makes up for the fact that the hero of this film might be actually evil. The climactic set piece involves lots of fellas in hats, being confusing in a museum. I like it. I do not like that the Dennis Leary monologue meant to make him sympathetic involves him beating a suspect unconscious because he was sad, but it just wouldn't be a McTiernan joint without that shit. John McTiernan has never met a cop abusing their power who he didn't feel sorry for. Anyway, Frankie Faison would never. Too cheerful.

Y'all know me. I desperately want to root for the heisters if at all possible. I managed to root for Mark Wahlberg with very little friction. I approach every film absolutely desperate to be charmed. And I certainly understand why people liked this movie so much, although I do sort of wonder how much Rene Russo being topless a lot ran up the numbers there. Or hairy-chested, dad-jeans-wearing Brosnan for that matter. Or, you know...Dennis Leary, I guess. The world is a wide and varied place.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Oh....Renoir"

Is it under two hours: Yes

Did I understand the plan: The plan? Yes. The point of the plan? Not especially.

Pan-Seared Halibut from A Mediterranean Gourmet and Easy Rice Pilaf from Simply Recipes

At one point they namecheck Cipriani, where Rene Russo generically orders "the fish." We don't actually see her eat "the fish," because, as previously noted, I am almost positive her character has an eating disorder and only consumes green juice and Pepsi One. Nevertheless, there is some sort of pan-seared fish over rice pilaf on their menu, so, here we are. Or, here we were several weeks ago. I think this was fine.

Up next: Illusion, Michael