{"id":195998,"date":"2021-03-06T23:07:08","date_gmt":"2021-03-06T20:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/watch-the-beta-test-review-a-hollywood-agent-in-an-erotic-twilight-zone\/"},"modified":"2021-03-06T23:07:08","modified_gmt":"2021-03-06T20:07:08","slug":"watch-the-beta-test-review-a-hollywood-agent-in-an-erotic-twilight-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-the-beta-test-review-a-hollywood-agent-in-an-erotic-twilight-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch &#8216;The Beta Test&#8217; Review: A Hollywood Agent in an Erotic Twilight Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a4e7e03e7f10\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a4e7e03e7f10\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-the-beta-test-review-a-hollywood-agent-in-an-erotic-twilight-zone\/#%E2%80%9CWatch_Online_%E2%80%98The_Beta_Test_Review_A_Hollywood_Agent_in_an_Erotic_Twilight_Zone%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Watch Online &#8216;The Beta Test&#8217; Review: A Hollywood Agent in an Erotic Twilight Zone&#8221;<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/watch-the-beta-test-review-a-hollywood-agent-in-an-erotic-twilight-zone\/#%E2%80%9C%E2%80%98The_Beta_Test_Review_A_Hollywood_Agent_in_an_Erotic_Twilight_Zone%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;&#8216;The Beta Test&#8217; Review: A Hollywood Agent in an Erotic Twilight Zone&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CWatch_Online_%E2%80%98The_Beta_Test_Review_A_Hollywood_Agent_in_an_Erotic_Twilight_Zone%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Watch Online &#8216;The Beta Test&#8217; Review: A Hollywood Agent in an Erotic Twilight Zone&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9C%E2%80%98The_Beta_Test_Review_A_Hollywood_Agent_in_an_Erotic_Twilight_Zone%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;&#8216;The Beta Test&#8217; Review: A Hollywood Agent in an Erotic Twilight Zone&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<div>\n                        In the late \u201990s, when Jim Carrey did his pivot away from rubber-faced anarchy to became a serious actor, the detour didn\u2019t last all that long, but he gave three stupendous performances (\u201cThe Truman Show,\u201d \u201cMan on the Moon,\u201d \u201cEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind\u201d), and one of the things that made them great is that Carrey, in those roles, seemed to be expressing more of himself than ever. He didn\u2019t jettison his sn<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>ish, ironic, through-a-glass-snarkly comic vibe; rather, he showed you the anguish and romantic fervor on the other side of it. But imagine, for a moment, that you were watching a Jim Carrey who pushed his private obsessional qualities one step further over the edge \u2014 who was still, at times, quite funny, only now his motormouth personality was the sound of an ordinary man slowly and seriously falling apart.<\/p>\n<p>Jim Cummings is that actor. In \u201cThe Beta Test,\u201d he plays a Hollywood talent agent who\u2019s like one of the smarmy deal-point players on \u201cEntourage\u201d taken to a whole new level of toxic competitive paranoia, and he\u2019s arresting to watch. The reason the Jim Carrey comparison is so striking is that, first of all, Cummings resembles him (though with a touch of the young David Byrne\u2019s spooky-eyed elegance), but also because there\u2019s a Carryesque italicized force to his personality that wires the audience right into him. His hyper-intelligent gaze seems to take in everything in front of it, yet what he does with that knowledge is a bit more warped; he seizes onto it like a doggy bone. He\u2019s fighting to retain his power in a world that wants to take it away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Beta Test,\u201d which Cummings co-wrote and co-directed, is a down-the-rabbit-hole, daily-life-as-Twilight-Zone digital-age erotic horror film about the sick soul of Los Angeles. It\u2019s a kind of companion piece to the movie that put Cummings on the map and onto my radar: \u201cThunder Road,\u201d the astounding 2018 indie drama that took the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW. There, too, Cummings played a man drenched in obsession, only he was a heartland loser \u2014 a mustached small-town cop teetering on the edge of divorce, screwing up at work, without realizing that his existence was slipping away from him. Cummings\u2019 subject appears to be the spectacular meltdown of the male ego as it gets nudged out of the center of society, and in \u201cThe Beta Test\u201d he plays an entitled alpha dick who gets the grand temptation he deserves.<\/p>\n<p>His Jordan Hines is one of the star sharks at a legendary talent agency, and that means he\u2019s imitating four decades\u2019 worth of <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a> images \u2014 the suits, the car of the moment (it\u2019s now a Tesla), the volume level with which he\u2019ll insult an underling in front of coworkers, the fake laugh that says, <em>I have to be laughing along with you right now to not be revealed as the scum I am<\/em>. He\u2019s acting the way he\u2019s been taught a corporate killer is supposed to act. He\u2019s Jeremy Piven in \u201cEntourage\u201d meets Leonardo DiCaprio in \u201cThe Wolf of Wall Street\u201d meets\u2026something far worse.<\/p>\n<p>What makes the film a trenchant peek at where Hollywood is today is that it keys off the war between the WGA and the talent agencies to show us how the agencies have suffered an attrition of mystique. In the Michael Ovitz \u201980s, the agent was the new god, and the mantra was packaging. In the \u201cEntourage\u201d 2000s, the agent was still a master of the universe, but the snakiness was starting to eat its own tail. Now, with the entertainment world increasingly splintered, the era of high packaging is fading, making the agents look more like cogs pretending to be more important than they are.<\/p>\n<p>Pretending is what Jordan\u2019s job is about. He\u2019s pretending to be your friend, pretending to be a business assassin, pretending to net you the deal of a lifetime. But he\u2019s past pretending that it all means anything. I\u2019ve rarely seen an actor portray this kind of hotshot sociopath while showing you, as Cummings does, the torrents of anxiety that drive him. Jordan is about to be married, to the centered and adoring Caroline (Virginia Newcomb), and he would seem to have it all. (He\u2019s pretending to be a sweet and caring fianc\u00e9 too.)<\/p>\n<p>But then an offer drops in from the heavens. In the mail, he receives a small purple envelope, and inside, in the embossed script of a wedding invitation, is a note requesting him to meet for an anonymous sexual rendezvous, along with a card offering a checklist of kinks. The temptation is overwhelming to him: not just the adulterous thrill of it, but the promise of sex liberated from identity. So he fills out the card and sends it in, and days later another purple envelope arrives, this one containing a meeting time and the key to a room at the Millennium Hotel.<\/p>\n<p>He goes, and sees a purple silk blindfold on the door handle, sealing the scene\u2019s minimalist note of \u201cEyes Wide Shut\u201d mystery and dread. Then he enters the room, and to our surprise he has an experience that lives up to his dreams. There\u2019s a montage of Jordan saying <em>\u201cIt\u2019s exciting\u201d<\/em> to his clients, and now we see what\u2019s really exciting him.<\/p>\n<p>But then it\u2019s over, and that\u2019s it (no more purple envelopes). And now that he has dipped into this forbidden oasis, it starts to take over his life. Everywhere he looks, women are coming on to him (but are they?). An assistant makes an outrageous, taunting reference to his secret meeting (but did she really?). Feeling as if he\u2019s losing his bearings, Jordan confesses what happened to his only buddy, his agent partner PJ (winningly played by the film\u2019s co-writer-director, PJ McCabe), and the two set out to investigate where, exactly, the envelope came from.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Beta Test\u201d is a furtive satire of Hollywood corruption, a libidinous thriller about how the treacherous risks of adultery have been magnified by #MeToo and the age of digital tracking, and a nightmare of Internet consumerism run amok. The film\u2019s elements don\u2019t mesh as seamlessly as they should have. \u201cThunder Road,\u201d which Cummings wrote and directed himself, was all of a piece. \u201cThe Beta Test,\u201d like Cummings\u2019 \u201cThe Wolf of Snow Hollow\u201d (2020), is almost too ambitious, tucking a surfeit of ideas into its heightened surrealist mindscape. Yet the movie, at its best, can hold you in its grip. Cummings has won a cult following on social media, and that\u2019s because, as both actor and filmmaker, he uses a DIY aesthetic to touch something about our time \u2014 the way the 21st century tears at the notion of identity. As an actor he can rivet you, because he grasps that even seemingly ordinary people are now actors, chattering and performing and signifying who they are, while who they actually are gets buried under the noise.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/plain\" class=\"optanon-category-C0004\">\n  !function(f, b, e, v, n, t, s) {\n    if (f.fbq) return;\n    n = f.fbq = function() {\n      n.callMethod ?\n          n.callMethod.apply(n, arguments) : n.queue.push(arguments);\n    };\n    if (!f._fbq) f._fbq = n;\n    n.push = n;\n    n.loaded = !0;\n    n.version = '2.0';\n    n.queue = [];\n    t = b.createElement(e);\n    t.async = !0;\n    t.src = v;\n    s = b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n    s.parentNode.insertBefore(t, s);\n  }(window, document, 'script',\n      'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n  fbq('init', '586935388485447');\n  fbq('init', '315552255725686');\n  fbq('track', 'PageView');\n<\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/watch-movies-tv-series\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Watch Movies &#038; TV Series <\/a><\/span>category<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2021\/film\/reviews\/the-beta-test-review-jim-cummings-berlin-film-festival-1234922711\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Watch Online &#8216;The Beta Test&#8217; Review: A Hollywood Agent in an Erotic Twilight Zone&#8221; &#8220;&#8216;The Beta Test&#8217; Review: A Hollywood Agent in an Erotic Twilight Zone&#8221; In the late \u201990s, when Jim Carrey did his pivot away from rubber-faced anarchy to became a serious actor, the detour didn\u2019t last all that long, but he gave&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":195999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/dS933c3Yv9Qxi4DU9yaW1WfFhCC.jpg?w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-watch-movies-tv-seriess"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}