When I first heard about “Jack and Diane”, it looked like it would be my type of film. It looked like one of those weird werewolf love stories. Knowing me, if a genre film looks different, then I’m interested.

The film is about two teenage girls, Jack (Riley Keough) and Diane (Juno Temple) who meets on the streets of New York. They spend a night kissing each other while having fun. Diane and charming qualities soon begins to break through Jack’s dark and emotional heart. Their romance is threatened, when Jack finds out that Diane is leaving for boarding school. Unable to control her feelings for Jack, Diane starts experiencing violent and unexplainable changes in her body. Thru all of this, the girls must find away to keep and turn their love into a lasting one.

I went into “Jack and Diane” thinking that this was going to have at least some horrific action going on, as it felt like this was going to be a werewolf film. Sadly, I didn’t feel that this film was after the end of the film. This was one of those films where there isn’t much horrific action going on, even though it had good acting and good direction.

One of the things that made the direction good was the fact that writer/director Bradley Rust Gray does a good job handling the scenes. He takes his time to make sure that scenes had a dark tone to them. It allowed the gothic and obscure elements work. The scenes had a raw feel to it, which helped the main relationship work. The other thing that made the scenes work was the animation. Gray incorporates the animation from the Quay Brothers. It helps make the horror elements work, even though there isn’t much of the way of horrific action here. The other thing that I liked about Gray’s direction was the way that managed to get good performances out of his two leads. He does a good job making sure that the two actresses work well together. Both Juno Temple and Riley Keough did a good job with the way that they developed chemistry with each other. It helped make the relationship with the two characters work so well and made this film watchable.

Gray’s screenplay for the most part was so-so. The main thing that I liked about his screenplay was that focuses on the relationship between the two main characters. Gray does a very good job focusing on the aspects of their relationship from the fun times to the dark times. It makes you interested in the relationship and in the main characters. If it wasn’t for the fact that I liked the relationship part of the film so much, I would have had more of a negative view on this screenplay.
If there was one major thing that I didn’t like about this film was the character development. I wanted it go into more detail into the relationships between Diane and her aunt and the problems in Jack’s life. Gray made them feel like afterthoughts. It could’ve provided an interesting subplot or two, which would have given the film some more life than the end result.

“Jack and Diane” is a film that won’t please horror fans. But if you’re in the mood for a love story, then this would work for you.

Review Rating: Three Stars

WARNING: DO NOT EAT FRIED CHICKEN BEFORE OR WHILE WATCHING THIS MOVIE.

William Friedkin’s “Killer Joe” gets my vote for the most unforgettable WTF movie of 2012. It wallows in the sheer depravity of its deliberately idiotic characters without apology, and it is one of the most darkly hilarious movies I have seen in some time. I’m not sure I have “enjoyed” a comedy this black since Werner Herzog’s “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” and that was the WTF movie of 2009! It marks the second collaboration between Friedkin and playwright Tracy Letts whose play “Bug” Friedkin adapted into a movie back in 2006. With “Killer Joe,” neither is out to show the audience any mercy as they challenge them in a way most filmmakers don’t ever bother to these days (especially in the summertime).

The movie takes place in Texas and features some of the dumbest or (to be more polite) most dimwitted characters on the face of the earth. Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) is a drug dealer who is in debt to his suppliers by several thousand dollars, and his solution is to have someone murder his mother as she has a $50,000 insurance policy. His father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) shows only the slightest moral opposition to this plan as he divorced Chris’ mother a long time ago and has since gotten married to the conniving Sharla (Gina Gershon), and Chris already has one person in mind to carry out this cold-hearted assassination.

That person is Joe Copper (Matthew McConaughey), a police detective who works as a hired killer on the side. Now Joe demands an upfront payment of $25,000 for his services, but Chris and Ansel can only pay him after receiving the insurance payout. As a result, Joe ends up taking a retainer to make up for that: Ansel’s daughter and Chris’ sister Dottie (Juno Temple). Like with all crimes based on greed, all the careful preparation can’t keep these characters from falling into that nasty realm of disaster. But long before the movie’s end, you will agree that they all have earned the fate they ever so thoughtlessly brought on themselves.

If this seems like an unusual movie for Oscar winning director Friedkin to make, it shouldn’t. Friedkin’s movies, with the exception of “The Exorcist,” have never had characters that are deserving of redemption. “Killer Joe” will be seen by many as a bold motion picture of his, but his resume of work shows that he has never passed judgment on any of the characters that inhabit his movies. He is also a brilliant filmmaker in that he surrounds himself with a cast of actors who don’t easily judge the characters they play either.

McConaughey has been on a roll ever since he gave up making those dopey romantic comedies for movies like “The Lincoln Lawyer” and “Magic Mike.” With “Killer Joe,” he ends up giving perhaps the bravest and boldest performance of his career to date as his character is as immoral as they get. We never learn why he decided to get into this line of work while being employed as an officer of the law, but it doesn’t matter in the end. McConaughey gives us a mesmerizing portrait of a character who is more than aware of how amoral he is, and he is not about to apologize for that.

The other actors like Emile Hirsch and Thomas Haden Church deserve a lot of credit as they portray the dimwitted nature of the characters perfectly without just playing it for laughs. They play each character as being serious in what they say and what they do, and that allows the audience to laugh uncontrollably at certain moments because they almost won’t believe how badly they screw things up. Both Hirsch and Church are perfectly cast here as they invest their characters with a history that shows on their faces and which doesn’t always need to be made clear with words.

A special badge of courage however needs to go to Gina Gershon who plays Ansel’s current wife Sharla. It feels like it’s been a while since we have seen her in anything, and she is at her most unglamorous in “Killer Joe.” Her character thinks nothing of opening the front the front door without wearing anything from the waist down, and this is not to mention what McConaughey ends up making her do with a piece of fried chicken (I’ll let you witness that for yourself). Even as her character wears too much makeup to where her mascara runs down her face, making her look like a The Joker, Gershon gives a truly fearless performance as someone who thinks she’s better than the people around her. Of course, her character finds out in the worst way possible that she is not.

The one person however who really caught my eye was Juno Temple who portrays the youngest child of the Smith family, Dottie. You may remember Temple as Selina Kyle’s street smart friend from “The Dark Knight Rises,” and she makes Dottie a fascinating enigma. Her character is at times willfully innocent, seemingly naïve, but she actually becomes the only member of this trailer park family with any sort of intelligence. Temple is utterly beguiling in “Killer Joe,” and I look forward to seeing more of her in the future.

“Killer Joe” was already earning infamy before its release as the MPAA gave it the dreaded NC-17 rating which, at this point, it wears on its shoulder without apology. Did it earn that rating? Well, yes and no; this is certainly no movie to take your kids or impressionable teenagers to see. Then again, if “Killer Joe” were released by a major movie studio, it would have somehow gotten an R despite its content. Whatever you think this movie deserves the NC-17 rating or not, the hypocrisy of the MPAA remains maddening and never ending.

Friedkin has been leaving in the shadow of his most famous work for years as if no one would ever let him get past “The Exorcist,” “The French Connection” or even “Sorcerer.” The truth however is that he has not lost his talent in setting up scenes that have tremendous suspenseful impact. This is especially the case whenever McConaughey is onscreen because when he appears you know things are going to get really bad. Friedkin also is well served by his collaborators such as cinematographer Caleb Deschanel who finds a twisted beauty in such utter depravity, and composer Tyler Bates gives the movie’s most suspenseful and horrifying moments a strong atmospheric quality that makes the story all the more claustrophobic.

It’s hard to say where exactly “Killer Joe” will end up on William Friedkin’s long resume of work, but it is safe to say it is far more accomplished than other movies of his like “Deal of the Century,” “The Guardian” and “Jade.” With this film he gives willing audience members an experience that they will not easily forget, and he directs Matthew McConaughey to one of the best and most explosive performances of his career. Those in the mood for the most disturbing of black comedies should not pass “Killer Joe” up.

* * * ½ out of * * * *