Herman's Cure-All Tonic

MOVIE #1,472 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 03.22.24 Commencing an impromptu miniseries on the rather extensive short film work (eight movies in eight years) of Ari Aster to flush out his Director Focus. Unlike the Safdies and other recent luminaries, I was surprised to find all of his non-feature work readily available online in various degrees of good/decent/bad resolution. The protege of a druggist is having trouble recreating his ailing mentor’s homebrew, the titular cure-all tonic. This is a dark and weird little film. A sleeping Herman starts leaking a goopy substance which the young employee bottles and accidentally sells to an angry customer thinking it's the famous potion. When she returns, now pleasant and polite, she says the new tonic cured everything. There's a stiltedness to the performance and general vibe that's somewhere between intentional and “I made this when I was 22.” It has seeds of the manic ingenuity to come but it's definitely raw.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
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While he sells a flagship product invented by his dad, a pharmacist struggles with obsessive requests and severe criticism from his clients. Meanwhile, his father also puts pressure on him due to his angry and despising behavior. It was released on December 15, 2008.