Capital Celluloid 2023 — Day 68: Thu Mar 9

The Comedy (Alverson, 2012): Castle Cinema, 6.45pm

This film is part of the Jellied Reels film club strand at Castle Cinema. More details here.

Chicago Reader review:

Rainer Werner Fassbinder presented his early stage dramas with a company called the Anti-Theater; similarly, this provocative indie feature might be described as an anti-film. The characters—a circle of overprivileged, nihilistic New York hipsters in their mid-30s—are deliberately unlikable, and there’s no recognizable narrative structure that might explain their ugly behavior. Instead director Rick Alverson presents their heedless lives as case studies in first-world arrogance and cultural insensitivity. The dialogue consists mainly of would-be ironic insults and vulgarities; the “comedy” is that there’s nothing funny about them. In a bold move, Alverson has filled the cast with the sort of counterculture heros his characters would likely admire: Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!), stand-up comic Neil Hamburger (billed here under his real name, Gregg Turkington), and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem.

JR Jones

Here (and above) is the trailer.