Sunday, April 8, UW Cinematheque, 11 a.m.; and Monday, April 9, AMC Madison 6, 3:30 p.m.
An hour into Hal, Amy Scott’s vibrant documentary about shamanistic director Hal Ashby, I realized I was grinning. I had no idea when the grin started. It could have started during discussion of any of the seven consecutive masterpieces Ashby filmed over the course of the 1970s. Had it started during the section on Being There? Had I been holding the smile since the Harold & Maude chapter? Maybe I was smiling because I just like that this movie gives Ashby his due. Hal offers nothing but adulation from a series of cohorts who were awed by his transgressive vision, humanistic brilliance and his fighting spirit. Nary a detractor is in sight — but hell, who cares? He deserves his 90 minutes in the sun. Ashby is the one we left behind, never put in the pantheon of ’70s greats alongside his contemporaries Scorsese, Coppola and Altman. Hal fails to explain his lower status, but gives a strong argument for his ascension.
The Wisconsin Film Festival will also be featuring Ashby’s seldom-seen debut The Landlord on Sunday, April 8, at 1:30 p.m. at Cinematheque.
Vampire Clay
Sunday, April 8, UW Cinematheque, 6:45 p.m.; and Tuesday, April 10, AMC Madison 6, 8:15 p.m.
It’s a bad sign when, midway through a horror movie, you realize it’s supposed to be a comedy. It’s worse when you later realize you were wrong: The comedy is accidental. Of course, there’s a fine line between the two genres. Both require people going through absurd circumstances with utmost seriousness, both deal with heightened tension and release, and both are likely to have characters screaming. Vampire Clay has all of this plus a lot of body horror, which if done wrong — as is the case here — plays as gross- out humor. There’s this clay, you see, that eats people then takes their form. It wreaks havoc on a small art academy in rural Japan. Despite its title, it’s more a body-snatcher movie than vampire tale, and the claymation that is necessary to make the creature work is unintentionally laughable. Vampire Clay tries to say something about thwarted ambitions and the desire for artistic immortality, but like most things here, it’s very hard to take seriously.
"Clara's Ghost"
Clara’s Ghost
Friday, April 6, AMC Madison 6, 8 p.m.; and Saturday, April 7, UW Cinematheque, 12:45 p.m.
Here is an actual horror-comedy about thwarted ambitions that works. A family of has-been actors assemble at their Connecticut home where they drink, obsess about their failures and revel in “playful” mockery. They are all so self-absorbed that they either can’t tell or don’t care that their mother, Clara, who quietly suffers through their games, has gone insane. But, today she has found someone who needs her, a neighborhood ghost who just might inspire her to finally murder this obnoxious family. It’s a gothic shaggy dog story (replete with a shaggy dog) that plays like a John Cassavetes movie if he had an ear for comedy.
The cast has a chemistry that is literally ingrained in their DNA. It is written and directed by Bridey Elliott, who plays one of the daughters, alongside her sister, Abby (formerly of SNL). Their washed-up actor father is played by their dad, comedian Chris Elliott. The unmoored Clara is played by their mom, first-time actress Paula Niedert Elliott. This is a risky casting move, considering she is the dramatic core of the movie, but her outsider status works quite well for the brittle Clara, a misfit in her own family.
