How unserious can a sci-fi programmer be? – Blogging Sole

Underground film duo Leif Kalman and Whitney Horn aren’t quite honing their style with their new film “Dream Team,” their fourth in 15 years. It would mean that there is a fully realized form upon which the improvised humor and nonsense variations operate. The film, which will get a limited theatrical run in New York and Los Angeles on November 15, starts out on firm ground, with the familiar buddy-detective premise that many late-night junk genre programmers have used as a strong narrative foundation. Unlike those commercial efforts, “Dream Team” barely has continuity, let alone narrative structure, or top priority, instead reshaping itself every few minutes with new, surreal flourishes, and with no destination seemingly set. Although the film may be funny, it often feels like a private joke.

The two heroes are a team of Interpol agents, played by French film actress Esther Garrel and ambient musician Alex Zhang Hongtai. The duo takes on a mission to analyze an illegal smuggling operation – a MacGuffin, and perhaps even monster of the week, a collection of sea coral specimens that emit toxic emissions that could be deadly. There are a series of bodies to be identified, but the two are quick to reassure the others that they have no police authority. They’re hardly detectives. One of them says they don’t “solve puzzles.” They are just trying to “understand” them.

It’s an early statement that conveys the quiet fog that surrounds “Dream Team,” which also shows in its casual penchant for bad wordplay. Along with some double-meaning dialogue, episode title cards reading “Ashes to Asses” and “Fax on the Beach” are spaced throughout the story (the project initially began as an idea for a web series). The film reaches an early climax with the introduction of the gloriously named Dr. Veronica Beef (Minh Thi Mia), who puts on a bullshit show that somehow begins in a laboratory and ends in a hot tub, where all the characters are a mess. undress.

The movie itself has even more bizarre behavior. Shot on 16mm, “Dream Team” succeeds in capturing the sheen of a daydream, with its lush sunlight and skeletal sets. Interpol agents are on a mission around the world, according to the narrator, but every café, office, and resort feels like part of the same coastal settlement. In a story with such prolific coral, the independent production is practically an aquarium itself, with plenty of brightly lit, shoddy but charming imitations of the tropics.

But the underwater calm dissipates after some time, especially since the passengers have the personality of goldfish. The investigation into the reef leads Interpol to a series of elusive suspects, but most of the actors seem tied down to a certain dead-end delivery that’s set up so that it never threatens to stir up the heat. Although she plays with a steady hand, Jarrell makes the biggest impression, speaking with a French accent that gives the English bullshit a certain poetry. It lends credibility to loose genre rules, much as Kyle MacLachlan did in Twin Peaks, or Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: The Next Generation, or any number of actors in the ’90s projects that Dream Team draws elements from. .

Like that first outing of Twin Peaks, Kalman and Horn’s story ends in a somewhat unresolved place, but not before grabbing a grab bag of narrative shadows. The filmmakers seem more fascinated by the aesthetic possibilities of a genre TV show, rather than the stable character they might have to reach if it gets on the air for enough episodes. As such, the film practically seems to issue its own cancellation before its end. There’s something romantic in this structure, but “Dream Team” still ends up a handsome stalemate, coming off too flat to fully lift into a disingenuous hum. A late scene introduces an unseen agent blowing smoke rings, an eccentricity that comes and goes with little novelty—a sign that the film’s intoxicating qualities have waned into soothing ones.

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