Mr. Nobody Is Fun Sci-Fi Jumble

With the science fiction drama Mr. Nobody by Jaco Van Dormael surviving as a cult film for the better part of four years, there was bound to be a bit of hype overshadowing the release by Magnolia Pictures. Even its premiere at the 66th Venice International Film Festival is a thing of legend. The audience reportedly gave it a 10-minute standing ovation before slipping away into relative cult obscurity.

My advice is pretty simple. Ignore the hype because there are only three kinds of people who will enjoy this film: those who appreciate cinematically stimulating shots and set details, those who enjoy a philosophical cerebral puzzler regardless of its packaging, and those who appreciate the offbeat nature of relatively good indie films. Look around. Almost everyone who likes this film fits in one category.

It's easy enough to fit into all three categories too, while remaining objective enough to know that this film isn't for everyone. It feels long after slogging through the middle and the non-linear format sometimes lends itself to the film and other times feels haphazard. It's not great, but it has greatness.

The whole is not really equal to the sum of its parts. 

Or, more exactly, Mr. Nobody (Jared Leto) is riddled with clips and bits and moments that transcend the finished product. And even though there are not enough of them to make this film a masterpiece, there is a timeless quality about the work that will linger at least as long as the storyline, literally 2092.

Not all of the story takes place in 2092, but this futuristic jumping point is a good enough indication that things can get weird. The protagonist is a 118-year-old man, being billed as the last mortal on Earth.

The balance of the population has conquered mortality. They live in a world where everyone has access to an endless renewal of cells, except Nemo Nobody, which makes him the most interesting novelty on the planet. Everyone wants to know about his finite life and how he lived it.


The only rough patch is that he can only remember it through dreams and hypnosis-induced memories, mostly pre-birth until age 9, age 15, and age 34. These three later ages aren't random either. The first represents a major life choice, the second represents the consequence and second major life choice, and the third plays out the consequences of those outcomes.

You have to make the right choice. 

If Nobody has a gift, it is best summed up as the ability to see far into his own future in order to make the "right choice" or at least what appears to be the "right choice." He initially learns this when he cannot decide what to buy with a quarter that he eventually pockets. He can own all three, any time.

But not all choices work that way. Sometimes you have to choose, such as making the choice between parents who divorce, and play your life out from that point. Nobody gets to choose both. Nobody also gets to choose which girl will become the love of his life, for better and worse.

This choices plays out in a myriad and sometimes mired number of ways, but sometimes they also lead to beautiful lines, thoughts, and philosophies that are often sardonic and other times astute. The only trick is that you have to ferret many of them out because Jaco Van Dormael doesn't make it easy.

A few graphs about Jaco Van Dormael.

The Belgian film director Van Dormael won his first award for a short film in 1981, before going on to make a series of films that respectfully portrayed people with disabilities. His best known full-length films include Toto the Hero and The Eighth Day.

Mr. Nobody was his first English speaking film and his last notable film. It has rightfully received praise and accolades, but has yet to recoup the largest budget in Belgian film history. The most likely reason is its inaccessibility. As noted, it's a great film but not for everyone.

Mr. Nobody By Jaco Van Dormael Unravels 6.4 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

The cast is immense, making it difficult to recognize everyone. Jared Leto stands out for his portrayal of  the adult and old Nemo Nobody. The feat required him to play variations of the same man across very different life experiences. Sarah Polley portrays an adult Elise, with a striking portrayal of someone on the verge of a mental breakdown. All of the children, playing various parts at age 15, are memorable.

For something mesmerizingly different, provided you're willing to work for it, check out Mr. Nobody [BLU-RAY] on Amazon or rent the film on iTunes. Magnolia Pictures will also be releasing the film in select theaters this November. Currently, Sante Fe, New Mexico, and Vancouver, Washington, will open with play dates on November 1.

Headhunters Keeps Rolling For Tyldum

There isn't any other way to describe it. Headhunters is an absolutely stunning Norwegian thriller with two con games colliding in a fury of intellectual friction, fists, and gunfire. Based upon the book of a similar name by Norwegian author Jo Nesbø, the film is an unpredictable joy ride filled with manipulative twists and unforgettable scenes.

The first con is perpetuated by headhunter Roger Brown. He works as one of the most powerful executive headhunters in Norway, making 20-35 percent of a multimillion dollar salary any time he matches the right candidate with the right position. It's a high stakes game with big risks and bigger rewards.

Being at the top of such a lucrative career would be enough for most people, but Brown has two distinct problems. He's short, standing a mere 5' 6" and feeding what amounts to a cool, aloof, and amoral personality disorder to overcompensate for it. He also doesn't make enough money to keep pace with the extravagant lifestyle he uses to fuel a larger-than-life reputation.

Meet Roger Brown. He's a part-time art thief. 

To compensate for the lifestyle, Brown (Aksel Hennie) has invented a second source of revenue as a part-time art thief. As inventive as the story itself, Brown uses his position to ask candidates whether or not they own any original art, mesmerizing them with analogy that reputation dictates the value of art much like it dictates the worth of a CEO, before a rapid set of questions about family, household staff, and pets.

Brown doesn't ask to merely size them up for the job as it seems. He wants to know what he can steal and how difficult the job might be. The only thing he doesn't ask about is their alarm systems. Brown has an inside man at the finest security company, someone who receives a heads up after Brown schedules a candidate's meeting to coincide with any time that no one would be home.


This is also what makes Brown such an attractive anti-hero in Headhunters. He doesn't burgle homes, but rather swaps out replica art with the original while his candidate meets with the prospecting firm. Ideally, they won't ever know the original has gone missing, at least not for months.

Meet Clas Greve. He's the hardest mark. 

Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is everything that Brown believes himself not to be. He is a handsome and charismatic son of an affluent family who recently arrived in Norway and has yet to settle on a job. In fact, Greve is the epitome of everything that Brown believes could steal away his wife, Diana Brown (Synnøve Macody Lund), who introduces the two at the opening of her art gallery.

Although immediately jealous of his wife's doting on Greve, Brown sees two opportunities. Greve could be the right fit as CEO of a conglomerate based in Oslo. He also happens to own an original painting by Sir Peter Paul Rubens that was believed to be lost during World War II. The painting could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and the answer to the debt Brown has incurred by funding his wife's gallery.

What makes Greve an especially hard mark is that any genetic and ancestral blessings he might have are backed up by his first career. He was a special forces operative, specially trained in tracking down terrorists. If there was ever a threat to thwart Brown, it would likely be the one man who is running a con of his own.

Headhunters is driven by the near-perfect handling of a sharply dark story.

Director Morten Tyldum delivers what most will measure up as his best directorial effort to date. As well earned as the critical acclaim was for his feature film debut Buddy in 2003, everything he had learned in the past decade as a rising film talent has culminated in this film with the help of screenwriters Lars Gudmestad and Ulf Ryberg.

Tyldum does an excellent job guiding Aksel Hennie to transform himself from a self-loathing and dislikable character into a protagonist people are persuaded to get behind, despite working on a relatively modest budget and a film schedule shot in the dead of winter. He also added some dark Nordic humor into the film, taking advantage of Norway's willingness to embrace morally flawed characters. He is one to watch, especially now that he is slated for English-speaking films as well.

Headhunters Creeps In To Explode At 9.4 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale. 

As a twisted thriller that creeps in as an intellectual puzzler and spirals out of control in darkly comic violence, Headhunters tempers itself with convincing performances by Hennie, Coster-Waldau, Lund, Elvind Sander, Julie R. Ølgaard, and others. Likewise, despite being driven as a thriller, it is incredibly unafraid to tap a few tender moments as well.

Although released two years ago in Norway before migrating to the United States for a film festival and theatrical run last year, it is perfectly suited to set an early bar among indies and foreign films this year. Headhunters is currently available to rent or purchase from iTunes. You can also purchase Headhunters [Blu-ray] on Amazon or order the film from Barnes & Noble. Subtitles are seldom so fun to read. You can also find the book, Headhunters (Movie Tie-In), on Amazon. For the original novel, with fewer bouts of dark comedy, try Alibris. 

Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Few people ever earn the moniker "professional trouble maker." But there is one man who took it to the grave. He was the same man who used to head out into the night on his werewolf, without a helmet or any concern for speed limits.

The destination? As close to the edge as possible, without slipping over. Sometimes.

Originally a struggling freelance journalist, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson changed his life after embedding himself in a Hells Angels battalion. The story, written for The Nation, took more than a year and ended in a flash as angry and fascinating as his first book. Thompson endured a savage stomping at the hand of the bikers.

The success of the Hells Angels story also opened the doors for Thompson to write for The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Pageant before settling into his next assignment. He embedded himself in the hippie counterculture of San Francisco. And although Thompson would later idealize the concept of what they were doing in the 1960s, he was somewhat disenchanted as any great potential for this counterculture became lost without political conviction or an artistic core in the 1970s.

"Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairy-tale artist." — Hunter S. Thompson.

Although Thompson lived just as hard and fast as the people he covered, he never inherited their apathy. After witnessing the clashes between police and protesters of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, an event that Sandra Conklin said made him cry, he delved into the political experience, running for sheriff in Aspen, Colorado.

Thompson lost, but the loss also paved the way for the birth of Gonzo journalism with his 1970 article, entitled The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent And Depraved, and the two-part series for Rolling Stones that eventually became known as Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. It was a wake-up call to America of sorts; the beginning of his impunity and hilarity over an American tragedy.

Although the story was told as an account of fictional journalist Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo, it is the classically savage autobiographical essence of Thompson. For him, if the early years of the 1960s epitomized hope for the American Dream, then the early 1970s in Las Vegas represented the death of it.


Just as "The Vegas Book" was gaining even more attention, Rolling Stone put him in the center of American politics for his next series: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. And, in his pursuit of attempting to find the one honest politician, he primarily covered unsuccessful candidate Senator George McGovern. McGovern went on to beat Edmund Muskie and Hubert Humphrey, but not Nixon.

It was also in his coverage of the campaign that Thompson most notably locked in his reputation for goring sacred cows, even if it meant unapologetically twisting fact and fiction to the point where he report on rumors that he started. It was the peak of his career in that while he was hardly objective, he was always willing to ask tougher questions than many fellow journalists.

Alex Gibney does only a fair job with the extraordinary subject matter..

It is difficult to call Gonzo: The Life And Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson a definitive documentary because it falls short in never allowing the real magic of the man to bleed into the work. But that is not to say it falls entirely short. It does succeed in Gibney's flair for being a tireless researcher who works diligently to deliver on accuracy.

The result of his effort uncovers ample never-before-seen home movies, audiotapes, and passages of unpublished manuscripts. He also does a brilliant job in collecting commentary from the people who knew or were touched by Thompson. The one notable exception is actor Bill Murray, who was sorely missed in the documentary.

To his credit however, Oscar-winner Gibney — also known for documentaries such as Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side, and Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer — does limit the decline of Thompson to the last 20 minutes of the two-hour outline. Ironically, it is only in the last 20 minutes where the film best connects to the subject.

Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson Clips 2.2 On The Liquid Hip Richter Scale.

As soon as Gibney hits on Thompson's struggle as a quest for notoriety versus becoming a prisoner of his own fame, it provides a better context for the entire film. Up until that point, most people hang on a thesis floated early on — that the story is a contrast between the kind Thompson and cruel Thompson. It is a struggle, but the comparison would be between the influential Thompson and the mockable Thompson.

Watch the film with that perspective and you might enjoy it more fully. Although in circulation for a few years, Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson was recently featured on iTunes. It made the review cut more for the subject than the filmmaking. And yet, we suspect this work will likely be used one day as the field notes for the real thing.

For a less abridged version of the man, check out the audio collection on The Gonzo Tapes. You can also find Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson at Amazon. The DVD is also sold at Barnes & Noble.