Terri (Azazel Jacobs, 2011)

Jacob Wysocki in Terri

Cast: Jacob Wysocki, John C. Reilly, Creed Bratton, Bridger Zadina, Olivia Crocicchia, Tim Heidecker, Justin Prentice, Mary Anne McGarry, Curtiss Frisle, Tara Karsian, Diane Salinger, Jenna Gavigan. Screenplay: Patrick DeWitt, Azazel Jacobs. Cinematography: Tobias Datum. Production design: Matt Luem. Film editing: Darrin Navarro. Music: Mandy Hoffman. 

Terri sounds like another teen movie, but it isn't. It has all the elements of the genre: misfit kids, mean girls, horny guys, uncomprehending teachers, absent parents, and so on. Terri (Jacob Wysocki) is an overweight high school student whose misfit status is signified by the spelling of his name, which is usually that of a girl. He lives with his Uncle James (Creed Bratton), who is some kind of an invalid -- we never learn what the illness is, whether mental or physical, other than that he sometimes takes too many pills and blacks out. We also never learn what happened to Terri's parents, only that he doesn't know where they are. He wears pajamas to school and is usually late, which gets him sent to the office of the vice principal, Mr. Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly), who is something of an eccentric himself and specializes in trying to connect with the school misfits. What director Azazel Jacobs and screenwriter Patrick DeWitt do with this setup is to keep the audience off balance as Terri learns to embrace his misfit status. Terri is a wholehearted embrace of eccentricity, with good performances, engaging twists and turns, and a welcome lack of preachiness, but it left me feeling that there was too much quirk for quirk's sake. It's a bit like someone watched The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985), Dead Poets Society (Peter Weir, 1989), and Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant, 1997) and smoked too much weed.

Momma's Man (Azazel Jacobs, 2008)

Matt Boren, Flo Jacobs, and Ken Jacobs in Momma's Man

Cast: Matt Boren, Flo Jacobs, Ken Jacobs, Dana Varon, Piero Arcilesi, Richard Edson, Eleanor Hutchins. Screenplay: Azazel Jacobs. Cinematography: Tobias Datum. Film editing: Darrin Navarro. Music: Mandy Hoffman. 

A canceled flight leaves Mikey (Matt Boren), on a business trip to New York, spending a night with his parents in the apartment where he grew up. The stay extends into weeks as Mikey is drawn back into his childhood by the memorabilia crammed into the apartment. His mother (Flo Jacobs) is solicitous, constantly offering him food, while his taciturn father (Ken Jacobs) remains preoccupied with his own interests. Mikey sinks into his old collection of notebooks and comic books, and develops a kind of agoraphobia, becoming frozen at the top of the stairs that lead to the world below. Meanwhile, his wife, Laura (Dana Varon), is back in Los Angeles with their infant daughter, wondering why Mikey doesn't return her calls. Azazel Jacobs's movie is not only a story of a midlife crisis, but also a loving but slightly critical portrait of his own parents, who play Mikey's mother and father, filmed in their actual cluttered apartment where the director grew up. It's not like any other movie you've seen, being not a documentary and not quite fiction, but somehow real and touching and wistfully funny.   

 

The GoodTimesKid (Azazel Jacobs, 2005)

Sara Diaz in The GoodTimesKid

Cast: Azazel Jacobs, Gerardo Naranjo, Sara Diaz, Lucy Dodd, Pat Reynolds, Gill Dennis, Melissa Paul. Screenplay: Azazel Jacobs, Gerardo Naranjo. Cinematography: Eric Curtis, Azazel Jacobs, Gerardo Naranjo. Film editing: Azazel Jacobs, Diaz Jacobs. Music: Mandy Hoffman. 

In The GoodTimesKid Azazel Jacobs gives a millennial spin on the two-guys-and-a-girl trope popularized by French New Wave directors in films like Les Cousins (Claude Chabrol, 1959), Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962), and Bande à part (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964). The girl in this case is Diaz (Sara Diaz), who lives with one of the guys, Rodolfo Cano (Jacobs). But when the antsy Rodolfo gets fed up with their relationship, he decides to join the army. Somehow the letter telling him to report for duty gets sent to another Rodolfo Cano (Gerardo Naranjo), who goes to set the record straight, and winds up following the other Ricardo home. Diaz is there, preparing a birthday party for her Ricardo, who doesn't want one and storms off. So the other Ricardo decides to hang around with her. If none of this makes much sense so far, you have a choice: either stick around to watch this low-key wackiness develop, or find another film to watch. In its defense, the film has some lovely moments, as when Diaz does a loosey-goosey dance to "I Can't Give You Anything But Love." But if you have no affection for grungy slackers or existential ennui, not to mention low-budget independent filmmaking, this isn't for you. I liked Diaz, who reminded me of Shelley Duvall, and Naranjo gives his Rodolfo a sweetly lost melancholy that contrasts nicely with Jacobs's self-destructive ferocity, but as a movie it's really kind of trifling. 

The Lovers (Azazel Jacobs, 2017)

Debra Winger and Tracy Letts in The Lovers

Cast: Debra Winger, Tracy Letts, Aidan Gillen, Melora Walters, Tyler Ross, Jessica Sula. Screenplay: Azazel Jacobs. Cinematography: Tobias Datum. Production design: Sue Tebbutt. Film editing: Darrin Navarro. Music: Mandy Hoffman. 

Azazel Jacobs's The Lovers has a premise that sounds very French: A middle-aged married couple, each of whom has a lover, has decided to separate. But all of a sudden they discover that their old passion for each other has flared up again. As a result, they begin lying to their lovers to cover up their reheated marriage. But these are not Parisian sophisticates, they're American suburbanites. The couple, Mary (Debra Winger) and Michael (Tracy Letts), are cubicle-dwellers in tedious office jobs; their respective lovers, Robert (Aidan Gillen) and Lucy (Melora Walters), bring a little artsy glamour to their lives -- Robert is a writer and Lucy a dancer. Mary and Michael have promised their lovers that they will separate after their  college-age son, Joel (Tyler Ross), comes for a visit with his girlfriend, Erin (Jessica Sula). Joel has been witness to the tension in his parents' marriage, which he blames on his father, and he warns Erin that it will not be a pleasant visit. But Erin finds them to be warmly affectionate, which in its turn causes tension between her and Joel. Meanwhile, Robert and Lucy, both frustrated by the delay in the separation of Mary and Michael, begin to act out: Robert confronts Michael in a supermarket, and the volatile Lucy actually hisses at Mary when she sees her -- an event witnessed by Erin. Unfortunately, Jacobs can't find an easy way to resolve this crisis and the very promising film begins to fall apart. From the outset, in fact, the film feels a little off in tone, as if it's not quite sure when or whether we're supposed to laugh at the situations the characters fall into. For one thing, it's overlaid with and sometimes smothered by a lush, romantic, symphonic score by Mandy Hoffman that often seems at odds with what's happening on screen. Defenders of the film say that these are directorial choices designed to be unsettling, but I have to wonder why Jacobs chose this particular story to unsettle us with.