By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Joel Potrykus
Country: united_states
Year: 2015
Running time: 97
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2656588/combined
Kyle says: “BUZZARD is the story of a slacker and scam artist who does not get his comeuppance. I propose it as the first in an offshoot of the Slacker Genre called the Quadruple A Scam Artist Sub-Genre: Amoral, Asocial, Asexual, Anarchist. The many jolts of excitement I experienced during the hour and a half are almost indescribable: every frame of this film is electrically alive, every scene memorable. At times I wanted to jump out of my seat from the conviction that the actors are never going to pull this off (the director is one of the two leads), but they kept meeting and surpassing my primary criterion for the cinema: the element of surprise. The slacker/scammer may have his roots in models such as Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Godard’s BREATHLESS (1960), but this is something new.
“Marty Jackitansky (Joshua Burge) works a boring office temp job, at which he orders expensive unnecessary office supplies and then returns them for a cash refund. He closes a bank account and reopens it for a $50 promotional bonus. He signs over to himself refund checks returned to his company as undeliverable. He plays video games while eating Doritos and Bugles; the film’s highlight is an extended sequence of Marty hiding out in the basement of his buddy Derek (Joel Potrykus), both of them behaving like adolescent idiots. Finally he is forced to go on the lam as his many little rebellions against the corporate state go sour. His one beloved possession which he tends lovingly, will not part with, and ultimately uses as a vicious weapon, is a copy of Freddy Kruger’s razor-claw glove from the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET franchise (1984-2010). After Marty’s final crime against the system, he takes a demented victory lap down a deserted Detroit street looking for all the world like a buzzard taking wing. It is the most breath-taking sequence of film I have seen since the opening of THE ACT OF KILLING. This is not only a quintessential work of independent cinema, but also an example of why festivals such as New Directors/New Films are crucial, especially when consensus on value is fleeting. The feral brilliance of actor Joshua Burge was all the more startling when I met him wearing glasses, tie and jacket. Kudos to director Joel Potrykus. 5 cats
“Sunday, March 23, 2014, New Directors/New Films at the Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York.”