Watching this bloated “Big Gold Brick”, meretricious, unfunny, strained, and in the end trite black comedy/fantasy, one could keep in mind the phrase that the 1960s suburban mom and housewife who lives in all of our heads would use after being uncovered to a psychedelic rock tune: “Properly, that was completely different.” Besides, effectively, it actually isn’t.
“Big Gold Brick” opens with the picture of Sam Lifton, its ostensible protagonist, in his schlubbiest incarnation. He’s floating in an area, the end result, we later study, of being struck by an automobile. In voiceover, Sam says, “I by no means believed in destiny, future, kismet, no matter you need to name it.” Certainly. How does he get hit by an automobile? He leaves his house and catches a bus out of the city, to the accompaniment of the King Crimson tune “Red.” After leaving the bus he wanders the streets, and Andy Garcia’s Floyd, consuming ice cream in his Cadillac, plows properly into him.
We all know issues are going to work out okay, the form of, for Sam, as a result of the film is flecked with scenes through which he’s much less schlubby, has higher hair (for many of the film it’s lengthy, helmet-like the place it’s not stringy) and is recording an audiobook or giving a studying or speaking incredulously to a writer. His account of his acquaintance with Floyd, entitled “Massive Bricks of Gold,” is destined, so to talk, to turn out to be a literary occasion.
However for many of the films Sam, performed by Emory Cohen, comes off like a mixture of a tormented H.P. Lovecraft protagonist (he’s tremendously tricky), a younger Sam Kinison, and “Bighead” on “Silicon Valley.” He’s supposedly an author, however, there’s not a lot of lit discussions right here, which is perhaps a blessing. As a result of the extent of pretension on this film, written and directed by Brian Petsos, is excessive sufficient without it.
Floyd is mortified over having hit and grievously wounded Sam. Within the hospital, he affords Sam a deal: free room and board at his roomy suburban semi-manse, and $500 money every week, in trade for Sam writing Floyd’s biography.
Floyd’s household is a motley one. Due to course, it’s. His second spouse Jacqueline, “a profitable legal professional” in Sam’s description, is performed by a not-up-to-much Megan Fox. Tween’s son Edward (Leonidas Castrounis) is a dying metallic fan maybe into vivisection. Teen daughter Lily (Lucy Hale) is a former musical prodigy who stepped down from the ladder of success by ending a recital by smashing her violin and smearing her lipstick like David Bowie within the “Boys Maintain Swinging” video. In fact, at one level Jacqueline makes an attempt to seduce Sam. In fact, not as a result of it’s even vaguely believable, however as a result of that is simply the sort of self-anointed-male-genius opus through which this form of factor has to occur. (It’s potential, one supposes, that the seduction scene, and the concept Lucy additionally finds one thing engaging in him, are Sam’s delusions. However I problem you to care sufficient to decide on this.) When he’s not being improbably semi-seduced or listening to tall tales from Floyd, Sam is affected by vivid nightmares and certainly day-mares, like a speaking Santa doll within the through which bedroom Floyd has put in him.
Because it occurs, in the event you’re occupied with some sort of auteurist private thread, there’s a speaking stuffed monkey in “Lightningface,” the 2016 brief movie that Petsos directed, certainly one of two boorish shorts (the opposite is 2014’s “Ticky Cheesy”) on which Petsos and actor Oscar Isaac collaborated. Isaac seems right here as effectively, as a mysterious malefactor who takes hits from an inhaler and talks in a form of Strangelove communicate and shoots a man he says is his cousin, after which he says to Sam and Floyd “If I might do this to him … my cousin,” which is a little bit of a riff on Mark Rydell’s bit in Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye.”
Like many people, Petsos has seen quite a lot of motion pictures. However, not like many different movie fans turned filmmakers, he hasn’t found out something helpful to do along with his influences. There are threads on this film that recommend Richard Kelly, Wes Anderson, David Lynch, the Coen brothers, and extra. And the music cues right here, and in Petsos’ shorts, are very energetic. (Apropos Crimson’s “Pink,” Petsos really edits it, poorly, for size within the first sequence it’s used. This was a foul name when Scorsese made it with Mott The Hoople’s “All The Means From Memphis” in “Alice Doesn’t Reside Right here Anymore,” and it’s a foul name right here.) And there’s not a lot else. Function-length failures as abject as this one are nearly horrifying, partly as a result of one worries about what sort of a snit the director shall be figuring out if/when he will get a second shot.
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