{"id":3,"date":"2010-05-21T20:09:16","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T20:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/?p=3"},"modified":"2010-05-21T20:09:16","modified_gmt":"2010-05-21T20:09:16","slug":"366weirdmovies-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/?p=3","title":{"rendered":"366weirdmovies.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

MR. SADMAN<\/strong>
\nby The Warden of Weirdness, 366weirdmovies.com<\/a>
\n
\nWHY IT WON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T MAKE THE LIST (of the 366 Weirdest Movies of All Time): More quirky than weird. There are some offbeat montages, including a nutty but oddly appropriate music video stuck into the middle of the film, but not enough to elevate it to true weirdness.
\n
\nCOMMENTS: No doubt about it, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Al No\u00e2\u20ac\u2122mani\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s airy and amiable performance as Saddam Hussein impersonator Mounir that keeps Mr. Sadman<\/em>, a low-key indie comedy with an inventive premise but not quite enough laughs or plot, afloat. No\u00e2\u20ac\u2122mani is the requisite dead-ringer for the fascist dictator. But more importantly, with his arsenal of friendly, vulnerable, quizzical, and despondent expressions, Iraqi-born No\u00e2\u20ac\u2122mani (who died soon after filming was complete) invests his silent character with a surprising amount of humanity, turning him into something like an unhinged but harmless and sweet uncle for whom the audience roots. It was a gamble to make Mounir mute, but it pays off; the handicap gives the character an unexpected everyman aura that makes his sparse backstory irrelevant. The film features some mild satirizing of the subculture of struggling L.A. actors and technicians trying to break into the Hollywood film industry; there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a deeper warning about the absurdity of forging our own identities by emulating celebrities, but the theme is implicit in the plot, not appended as a sermon. The script scores some occasional chuckles, particularly with a pair of pot-smoking Hollywood wannabes whose minds get blown when Mounir walks past them at a party as they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re watching Saddam on CNN, and a scene where the middle-aged Iraqi plays basketball with some homeboys. There are also some groaners: Mounir\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s antagonists are FBI Agents Wang and Johnson (a couple of dicks, get it?) True to the title, there is an undercurrent of melancholy, and Mr. Sadman<\/em> often seems indebted as much to the classic alienation films of the late 1960s and early 1970s as it is to contemporary quirky indies. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an explicit citation to Taxi Driver<\/em>, a fairly obvious tribute to The Graduate<\/em>, and scenes of a man-child in a ridiculous costume strolling down city streets oblivious to urban reactions can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help but bring to mind Midnight Cowboy. The spirits of light comedy and lonely despair sometimes mix uneasily\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe laughs are largely jettisoned by the finale\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut for the most part, it works okay. The cinematography, music and editing are all professional. The script requires some leaps of faith: for example, I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t convinced Mounir\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s new-found Hollywood buddies would risk jail time to protect him from the FBI. With the exception of No\u00e2\u20ac\u2122mani and Rudy Ramos as a hotel operator, the acting is spotty. But the Iraqi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s expressive facial acting lifts the film to something that, while uneven, is often touching.
\n
\nAs appears to be increasingly the case in a movie business convinced its customers are demanding fewer alternatives to repetitive Hollywood fare, Mr. Sadman<\/em> has not found a distributor. The director is currently self-promoting the picture, and it can be downloaded for $8 from the Mr. Sadman site. The picture quality of the download is good, and I had no problem burning it to a standard DVD+RW for viewing on my television screen (individual results may vary).
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\nlink to original<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MR. SADMAN by The Warden of Weirdness, 366weirdmovies.com WHY IT WON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T MAKE THE LIST (of the 366 Weirdest Movies of All Time): More quirky than weird. There are some offbeat montages, including a nutty but oddly appropriate music video stuck into the middle of the film, but not enough to elevate it to true weirdness. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reactions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reactions.mrsadman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}