Soundtrack of Your Life: Remakes

 Soundtrack of Your Life is an occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.

Date: February 22, 2025, 9 a.m. hour

Place: Chuze Fitness in Uptown Albuquerque

Song:  "Beds Are Burning"

Artist: Awolnation ft. Tim McIlrath

Song:  "We Didn't Start the Fire"

Artist: Fall Out Boy

Irony Matrix: 1.9 out of 10

Comment: I was on the elliptical at the gym and heard "Beds Are Burning" come on, and it just didn't seem right; it didn't have the oomph that I was used to. That's because it wasn't the 1987 original -- by Midnight Oil -- but instead a cover from a couple of years ago by Awolnation. I don't know what exactly is lacking in the new version, but it never achieves lift-off. Is it merely that the vocals are not by Peter Garrett, the frontman for Midnight Oil? Was there something about the urgency of the Reagan era that doesn't translate to the Trump era? Do I remember the video and a fonder time from my (relative) youth? Is it just a crappier version? The new version has a techno feel to it (and, for some reason, a "Munsters" groove line). There's just no snap to it, however. And the vocals (by Tim McIlrath of Rise Against) feel shouted; so, props to Garrett as the O.G. in this one. Here is the original.

 

And then there is the infamous 2023 sequel to Billy Joel's much-ribbed 1989 original of "We Didn't Start the Fire." Let's call the original the beginning of the end of the MTV era. It was a list song, churning through Joel's 40 years on earth (he was born in 1949) and hopscotching along the global highlights of the second half of the 20th century, a "This Is Your Life" to all Boomers still stuck on JFK's assassination and the arrival of the Beatles and biding their time until Fox News would come along in the mid '90s. 

Joel's song actually reached No. 1 on the charts (he had only three in his career, and the other two are just as forgettable). I didn't have anything against the song -- it's clever in spots -- and I'm a pretty big Billy Joel fan; I just was more interested in Nine Inch Nails at the time. Anyway, Fall Out Boy (!) thought it would be a good idea to carry the torch and draft a whole new version, updating the years from 1989 to 2023. From a simple Google search, I learned that the band has been savagely roasted over it. I'm sure it's not much worse than the original (I haven't listened to it closely), but it's certainly not essential listening. And maybe the point here is that Joel made a lot of things look easy; I'd put him in the songwriting category a notch below the ones at the top -- Paul Simon, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Lennon-McCartney and Robert Pollard. In his prime he was brilliant. I haven't heard anyone say that about Fall Out Boy, but then I'm a little out of touch with the emo kids.

It did remind me that I've been working on a joke forever about taking my own stab at updating "We Didn't Start the Fire." It goes like this. "I see Fall Out Boy did an update of Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire' by writing new lyrics that touch on all the crucial people and world-shattering events that have rocked the globe since his song was released, right up to the present day. I worked really hard on it. I think it encapsulates every key moment that led us to where we are at this moment. Like the original, you have to sing it really fast, listing things rapid-fire. And I had to memorize the whole thing. I think I can't do it for you now. (Long pause.) Here goes:

"Kim Kardashian

Donald Trump.

"Thank you."

That's the bit. No need to embed a video of either version, right? 

Life Is Short: Hey, Bobby Dylan, I Wrote You a Review

 

Everyone was warned. In my recap of 2024 ("How Does It Feel?"), I contemplated the idea of going to see "A Complete Unknown," the biopic covering Bob Dylan's fertile period between his arrival of New York City around 1961 and his plugged-in spectacle at the Newport Folk Festival in summer 1965.

 

I made it through an hour of the movie at a sold-out matinee at the Guild Cinema before I walked out. The main problem with the film is that it barely qualifies as a movie; it's a wafer-thin narrative stitched together with extensive song performances -- meticulous reproductions earnestly rendered by Timothee Chalamet, who might have needed sinus surgery after his faithful parroting of Dylan's signature Midwest nasal twang. It's not much more than a karaoke festival, as Monica Barbaro jumps in to portray Joan Baez and also does her own singing. But while anyone can mimic Dylan, no one should ever try to re-create Baez's ethereal voice (or suffer comparison to her luminescent presence). I felt bad for Barbaro, who sings perfectly well, just not in another dimension; there's nothing special about her.

Elsewhere, "A Complete Unknown" suffers from the same limitations that drive me away from Hollywood biopics, particularly movies about artists I've admired as their careers unfold in real time along with mine. I'm no Dylanologist, but I dove deeply into his music for about 25 years at the end of the last century, and this movie had nothing to offer me after the magic of early-'60s Greenwich Village (derivative of a "Mad Men" episode) quickly wore off. 

Chalamet's performance of early Dylan songs was fun at first, but it eventually got stale. Plus, the love triangle -- Dylan falls for Suze Rotolo (here named Sylvie) and then beds Baez while Sylvie is studying art in Italy -- was building toward a histrionic showdown in which two smart, beautiful women put up with and perhaps fight over an immature jerk. (It's inadvertently comical when Baez drifts into a club at the sound of Dylan's voice, watches rapturously as he performs "Masters of War" at the height of U.S.-Soviet nuclear panic, and instantly drops her panties for him.)

Once Dylan received a royalty check for $10,000 from his second album and struck up a fanboy pen-pal relationship with Johnny Cash (the women behind me swooned as Cash's voiceover praised Dylan), I headed to the exit. All that lay ahead, I feared, were more movie-star impressions. A bland Edward Norton tries way too hard to capture Pete Seeger's earthy goodness; and I cowered at the prospect of someone named Boyd Holbrook -- surely named with this silver-screen moment in mind -- pretending to be a bad-ass Cash (who probably at the time was interested in Dylan's stash of amphetamines more than anything).

In fact, most of the performances are remarkably flat -- perhaps the result of deciding to cast actors based on historical resemblence (manager Albert Grossman, for example) -- including the talented Elle Fanning, who brings very little to the role of Sylvie beyond being a plot device as the woman who made Dylan woke in the era of civil rights and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It all felt like a clear-out for Chalamet, with the cast bowing to his transformation into a Boomer icon. If Chalamet's performance were anything more than passable -- and if the dialogue (some of which he swallows) had any snap to it -- that might have been acceptable. (Also, perhaps most mystifying of all, Chalamet is somehow not as pretty as the 21-year-old Dylan.) Director James Mangold, penning the screenplay with Jay Cocks and Elijah Wald, gives us repeated ham-handed winks to Dylan's penchant for fabricating his biography at the time but does nothing to dig deeper below the surface of that. (The movie suggests it's a mystery; but is there more to it than Robert Zimmerman was bored or embarrassed by his suburban upbringing and would do anything to be a rock star?)

Finally, I feared the coming melodramatic, too-faithful re-enactment of the (in)famous day in July 1965 when Dylan set the old folkies' hair on fire when he went electric, shredding "Maggie's Farm" with Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, days after the release of his single "Like a Rolling Stone," which would alter the landscape of American popular rock 'n' roll. This is by-the-numbers storytelling; Boomer culture porn. 

A month ago I noted that Dylan himself "is the ultimate work of fiction" and wondered if there is a point in "fictionalizing fiction -- or worse, trying to faithfully replicate it." I asked before if there was "a need to see America's puppy do a karaoke imitation" of Dylan. I have my answers: There is no point, and I don't need to watch it. If you want to know what the man was like back then, go watch "Don't Look Back" instead, or go deep into this exhaustive, fascinating fact-check of the movie from Variety.

Title: A COMPLETE UNKNOWN

Running Time: 141 MIN

Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  60 MIN

Portion Watched: 43%

My Age at Time of Viewing: 62 YRS, 3 MOS.

Average Male American Lifespan: 77.3 YRS.

Watched/Did Instead: Went home and listened to early Dylan ("Freewheelin'" and "Another Side") and watched the first half of Martin Scorsese's doc "No Direction Home," and started writing this review.

Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 3-1 (I might check out the ending someday out of curiosity.)

 

BONUS TRACKS

A moment in time that we shouldn't try to recapture or re-create -- "Like a Rolling Stone" at Newport (a version of which I presume runs over the closing credits): 

 

 

The transcendent slam poetry of "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie," April 1963:

 

Holy Crap!* The Gulf Between the Sexes

 

GORGE (C-minus) - I rolled my eyes so much that it was difficult to keep focused on how embarrassed I was for Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller as they were toting guns, doing battle with alien life forms and, of course, falling in love.

 

It's also hard to write a quick synopsis with a straight face. You see, they are expert sharp-shooters, with hundreds of kills between them and the requisite guilt that piles up on the soft shoulders of these earnest millennials who are good people deep down, because they care about their dad (her) or write poetry (him), and they're cute. Teller is American Levi, and Taylor-Joy is the Russian Drasa, and they are each on a secret mission to guard opposite sides of a grand abyss that, below a layer of fog, hides deformed superhuman creatures down at the proverbial gates of hell. The critters like to scamper up the sides of the gorge, but darn it if Levi and Drasa don't pick off every one of them (sometimes just in the nick of time!). The critters, conveniently, don't scamper up the sides and try to escape during times when it's convenient for the plot -- like when Levi and Drasa have a forbidden sexy date together or drop down into the pit to do a little battle with the devil's spawn.

You can't go five minutes in this two-plus-hour technicolor yawn of a movie without enduring an absolutely implausible tick in the plot. Sigourney Weaver plays a bad-ass intelligence commander who oversees the American side of the divide, and it's hilarious to watch Weaver's much younger stand-in run for her life when all hell breaks loose at the climax. Taylor-Joy, who can't weigh much more than 92 pounds here, effortlessly wields automatic weapons that are half her size while never missing her target. Teller struggles to prove once again that he's not a lightweight himself, by spitting his lines with a bitter world-weariness and later soaping up in the shower. Right off the start, Levi would know not to engage with the other side under threat of certain personal extinction, but doggone it, the heart wants what it wants, right?

Drasa and Levi can not only read each other's cue-card-size notes across the foggy gorge, but they can often hear incidental sounds from that distance. (The ears are as sharp as the eyes!) When all hell breaks loose, nothing goes wrong for our intrepid couple -- computers improbably spring to life; a long-dormant Jeep rumbles into action at the touch of two wires (and runs great!); the pair have an unerring sense of direction, even without GPS; explosions barely mess their hair let alone separate their bodies from their limbs; and little Drasa gets dragged at 40 mph, banging her head on a fallen tree trunk along the way, and she's none worse for the wear. And, as in every movie, the bad guys (things) conveniently like to attack one at a time, so that the hero can fend them off in succession. Some things haven't changed since I watched "Batman" on TV as a child.

There is a germ of a clever idea here. Whatever is going on down below is the unintended result of a post-WWII pact among the victors, a misguided act of hubris that told Robert Oppenheimer "Hold my beer." Levi and Drasa are on one-year assignments, cut off from the rest of the world, under strict orders not to engage with the other side. (But how could they not when a cute gal is acting all flirty and is packing a hipster collection of 45-rpm records.)

Pulp director Scott Derrickson and journeyman writer Zach Dean regurgitate plot points gleaned from binge-watching every action film and horror movie they could get their hands on. They create a somewhat interesting mucky underworld, and their budget allowed for unlimited explosions. They lucked out in getting two of the hotter young actors to agree to play some combination of Maverick, Indiana Jones, Wonder Woman and American Sniper. Taylor-Joy rocks a mild Russian accent that isn't too silly. Teller broods like a child doing an imitation of Robert Mitchum or Steve McQueen.

But the idea that these two relative soft targets could even think of racing through the bowels of hell to save humanity is just too absurd to take as seriously as we are doing right now. I've seen Roadrunner cartoons where Wile E. Coyote performs more believable stunts than Levi does here. They'll greenlight anything these days to provide content to Apple TV, especially when it is needed for Valentine's Day.

* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here.

BONUS TRACK

The schizophrenic soundtrack includes a jolt of "Blitzkrieg Bop" from the Ramones, a Bach suite, and a part-rap version of Bob Dylan's "(All Along the) Watchtower." The most on-the-nose choice is "Spitting Off the Edge of the World" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Perfume Genius:

R.I.P, Gene Hackman

 

News broke today of the death of Santa Fe's Gene Hackman. He was 95 and had been retired the past 20 years.

We reviewed three of his films in recent years. His comedy chops were at their peak in "The Royal Tenenbaums" from 2001 (see below). He made his bones with the gritty classic "The French Connection" in 1971. But treat yourself to the obscure release from a couple of years later, "Scarecrow," the shaggy-dog story that teamed him with Al Pacino. It is streaming on Turner Classic Movies.

We will take an opportunity in the coming weeks to catch up on Hackman's catalog. That will include Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation" (1974), a touchstone we've never seen.

BONUS TRACK

"That's the last time you put a knife in me, hear me?!"

Nevertheless, She Persisted

 

I'M STILL HERE (A-minus) - It was a heavy weekend. There was a memorial service for a colleague and friend who died in November. And then there was Walter Salles' paean to perseverance, a drama drenched in Brazil's military dictatorship of the early 1970s, "I'm Still Here." 

 

It is an emotionally challenging movie, but it is full of heart and humanity. Based on a true story, it follows Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) and her five children after her husband, Rubens (Selton Mello), a former congressman in the days before a military coup six years earlier, is snatched by government thugs, never to return. It is Torres' movie from beginning to end, a performance so intense and moving that you often ache for both her and her character.

Salles ("The Motorcycle Diaries") grounds this is an authentic family life in a seaside neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. The Paiva household buzzes with activity -- kids, a housekeeper, a dog and numerous friends, parties filled with food and fun. Record needles drop on vinyl, a 16 mm camera shudders as it captures memories, photographs from these happy days pile up. I was transported to the '70s watching the kids come and go, often barefoot on their way to or from the beach or a street soccer match. The first half hour is a master class in narrative table-setting, as Rubens and Eunice provide a family sanctuary that we know will be invaded and forever changed.

Meanwhile, street scenes and news reports cast a pall over the charmed life the family leads. The parents send their oldest daughter Veroca (Valentina Herszage) to London with friends going into exile, and Eunice and Rubens hunker down, knowing that Rubens is a target. We are aware that he is surreptitiously volunteering as a drop-source for communications among the resistance. Not only does he get escorted out of this happy home, but a day or two later so do Eunice and another daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski). Few horror movies can match the banality of evil imposed on Eunice for two weeks in a small cell, subjected to the inquisitions of apparatchiks, finding only a sliver of humanity in the occasional apologies of a sympathetic but powerless guard.

The film then becomes a tale of bravery and endurance. Eunice will get unofficial word of Rubens' death, but she will pick and choose how she confides in each child, eventually uprooting them from that tainted dwelling and moving them to Sao Paulo. Eunice stays active in the resistance network, keeping Rubens' story alive. In a memorable scene, when posing the kids for a news photographer, she resists the journalists' request to appear stoic, and she insists that the kids smile for the photo, and they happily oblige. That bravado in the face of tyranny will become a rallying cry that will echo through the years as the family's rallying cries. Torres, throughout, is never short of riveting.

Salles jumps ahead 25 years, to the mid-'90s, when the democratic government, in its reconciliation phase, finally provides Eunice, now a lawyer and activist in her own right, with Rubens' death certificate. She is accompanied by her son, Marcello (Antonio Saboia as an adult; Guilherme Silveira as a spunky child), whose real-life memoirs formed the basis for the movie. The film then transitions to Eunice's late-in-life work; another jump, to 2014, will find her infirm and wracked by Alzheimer's, as her children and grandchildren carry on the tradition of joyful gatherings.

The film embarks on a journey that goes from heart-warming to heart-pounding to heart-breaking. It is a profound rumination on the determination of individuals in the face of authoritarianism, and you can't help but feel uneasy watching it in an era in which 20th-century fascism is returning to fashion. The only criticism is that Salles overstays his welcome here. He doesn't need the 18 minutes beyond the two-hour mark. It's as if he wasn't confident enough to end it in an earlier era and perhaps he was being too faithful to Marcello's memoirs. The scenes with subsequent generations lack the spark of 1970-71, and there are too many interchangeable characters by that point, dragging down the narrative. A quick flash-forward is all that was needed, and the diminishing returns are the only barrier between Salles and a masterpiece.

BONUS TRACKS

Salles' characters bask in the pop music of the day, and while there are understandable nods in dialogue to the Beatles in the wake of their breakup, he resists the lure of obvious needle-drops and instead celebrates some catchy Brazilian hits of the era. Here is "E Preciso Dar Um Jeito, Meu Amigo" by Erasmo Carlos:

 

Caetano Veloso is name-checked in the film along with John Lennon by Veroca, who is besotted with London. Here is "Baby" by Os Mutantes":

 

Tom Ze with "Jimmy, Renda-se":

 

And a rollicking Tex-Mex-style number, "A Festa Do Santo Reis" by Tim Maia:

More Than Just Friends

 

MATT & MARA (B+) - Mara, a creative-writing adjunct professor, is discombobulated throughout this indie endeavor, and it is to Deragh Campbell's credit that the character can hold your interest in that state for 80 minutes. She is numb to her husband and toddler, and she is being hounded by an old friend, whose passive-aggressive antics push her buttons.

 

Matt (Matt Johnson) is Mara's pal from grad school. He reminds her -- by pointing out that he really shouldn't remind her -- that he's a published author and she is not. It has apparently been years since Matt has graced her presence in Toronto, but their deep platonic connection has never waned. As her husband forsakes her for an album his band is recording, Mara will be vulnerable to Matt's goofy charms. The question is, will they cross a line during a road trip to a conference that Mara is presenting at across the border in New York.

Johnson is one of our favorites, both in front of and behind the camera, most recently in "Operation Avalanche" and "BlackBerry." He has a rubbery face and impeccable timing, with an improvisational ease. Campbell here does everything with her face, especially her eyes, suggesting a deer-in-the-headlights daze from everything life is throwing at her, whether it is her marriage or her students or a general numbness over her career. She has a delicate voice but a determination to push through whatever phase this is in her life.

Writer-director Kazik Radwanski (who also used Campbell in "Anne at 13,000 Ft.") chronicles every tic and furrowed brow of Mara, and he lets his two stars vamp and bicker. There are a couple of deep conversations -- at one point Matt offers his philosophy of existence by saying, "I'm letting my imagination reach right to the level of my own stupidity which makes it my reality" -- but he also keeps it loose, like with a scene in which a barrista rudely drives them out of a coffee shop at closing time or when the two practice smiling at strangers on the street. This is smart neo-Mumblecore, propelled by two talented leads.

SLOW (B) - This offbeat character study out of Lithuania explores the lifestyle of the asexual. It's a laconic slice-of-life that manages to wring joy and pathos out of a tender love story.

Dance teacher Elena (Greta Grineviciute) has a meet-cute at her studio with Dovydas (Kestutis Cicenas) a sign-language interpreter, and after a few hangouts he drops the A-bomb on her: He has no interest in sexual relations with another person. After getting over the initial shock (it's not a joke, Elena immediately learns), Elena booty-calls an ex, but the sex is so underwhelming that she returns to Dovydas and agrees to explore a relationship full of kissing and cuddling but no serious rounding of third base. 

Writer-director Marija Kavtaradze takes a low-key approach and refuses to sensationalize the topic. The narrative unfolds steadily, as the couple rewrite the rules of a romantic relationship. The highs are not too high and the lows are not too low. The actors are attractive but average-looking, with regular-sized personalities. Grineviciute captures the quiet torture of a woman who has finally found a suitable partner and true love but cannot close the deal in a way that suits her physical needs.

BONUS TRACKS

"Slow" has a pop/techno soundtrack that features a couple of songs from Sweden's Irya Gmeyner, including "Dancing in the Park":

 

And "Electric," from Gmeyner and Martin Hederos:

 

And from the movie's climax, April Snow (Gmeyner's alter-ego) with "We Fucked It Up":

R.I.P., David Lynch, Part 1: In Utero

 We will be doing a multi-part tribute to David Lynch, who died January 15 at 78. Our biggest debt to him, though, will always be non-cinematic: his alt-weekly comic strip The Angriest Dog in the World, from the 1980s.

BLUE VELVET (1986) (B+) - David Lynch found his storytelling sweet spot -- call it psycho-comic nostalgic noir -- with a major breakthrough that would provide the template for his next two decades in film and television. From the opening scene -- flowers, a white picket fence, friendly firemen passing by on the fire truck -- Lynch announces that he is either celebrating or skewering a sclerotic vision of bygone American values. His camera immediately digs down beneath the surface of a groomed suburban lawn and then spends the next two hours wallowing in the underbelly of a culture gone to seed.

 

Kyle MacLachlan emerges from Lynch's "Dune" bomb of 1984 and leads the cast as a wide-eyed but overly curious squeaky-clean college boy Jeffrey, who plays junior detective and noses around the adult world of quirky intrigue, sparked by the discovery of a human ear. He hides in the closet of morose lounge singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) and learns that her husband and son are being held captive by creepy Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), whose oedipal kinks beset Dorothy. Frank heads up a crime syndicate best described as art-school Batman villainy, replete with giggling henchmen.  

Lynch is tipping his hand at a world that would blossom into his TV series "Twin Peaks." There is the northwest burg of Lumberton (where the AM radio station marks the bottom half of the hour with the sound of a falling tree); we get gruesome crimes and sexual perversion in small-town America; and there is always Dean Stockwell lip-syncing Roy Orbison's "In dreams" into a vintage industrial drop light.

Lynch has a ball inserting Jeffrey into a love triangle between Rossellini's masochistic submissive Dorothy and a teenage Laura Dern's straight-arrow girl-next-door, Sandy, for whom Jeffrey is the buttoned-up bad-boy alternative to her lunkheaded jock boyfriend. This all works not only as avant-garde absurdism but also as a tightly wound crime mystery. MacLachlan plays it straight down the middle while Hopper, huffing from an oxygen mask whenever he gets his jollies, is just bat-shit bonkers. This is a perfect bookend with the "Twin Peaks" run, before Lynch would get more bold and experimental at the turn of the millennium.

ERASERHEAD (1977) (B-minus) - You had to be there. And back then, most people didn't want to go anywhere near there. A years-in-the-making film school project improbably saw the light of day, although it made its bones as one of the original '70s midnight movies, first in Los Angeles and then across the country when it became a cult favorite

Revisit it now, and it's tough to see this as much more than an interesting novelty, a signpost along the road to David Lynch's origin story. It was shot on a shoestring budget, strung out over years, edited on the fly -- more of a provocation than a cohesive narrative. It is trapped in the uncanny valley between experimental cinema and B-movies. 

At least it is a first crack in the window into Lynch's brain. He apparently was obsessed with urban decay and serious fears of parenthood (or of abortion?). This is ostensibly the story of a couple torn apart by the birth of a deformed child -- one that is not much evolved from its sperm-shaped origins and resembles the creature from "Alien." Jack Nance plays the father, Henry, who lamely tries to care for it (a sight gag involving a vaporizer made me laugh out loud) but who is tortured not only by the being's presence but also by the fever dreams he pivots to, mostly involving a vaudevillian woman singing to him from the radiator in his apartment. 

Lynch's touches can be inspired. The apartment is decorated with plants, but they are scrawny sticks that jut from a pile of dirt, sans flowerpot. When the wife goes to retrieve her suitcase from under the bed, she tugs and tugs, and Lynch holds the joke so long that the Three Stooges would nod in admiration. Henry is dressed in the classic nerd outfit of the day, with a pile of hair that might make you think it inspired the title -- until the story spins off into German fairy-tale gloom to provide the true reason for the title. Nance, always with a worried brow, comes across as Babe Ruth with a bellyache.

This is all assembled with bargain-basement special effects and a churning score of ominous industrial sounds. You might be tempted to fast-forward through some of these painfully long takes. It's like a film-school study assignment you wish you could skip but know you shouldn't

***

If you can access the two-disc Criterion release of "Eraserhead," the extras are worth it -- there are multiple previous short films by Lynch and several short documentaries (across decades) discussing the making of the "Eraserhead," a fascinating dive into the L.A. film scene during the American New Wave era.

BONUS TRACKS

"Blue Velvet's" gritty soundtrack offers up Bobby Vinton's original title track, a few hip entries from Chris Isaak, and the introduction of Angelo Badalamenti to the Lynch oeuvre. We'll pluck out the easy boogie of Bill Doggett with "Honky Tonk":

New to the Queue

 Wait, where were we ... ?

Walter Salles' period piece about a woman standing up to the Brazilian government that disappeared her husband, "I'm Still Here."

We'll probably regret this, but we're willing to take a chance on the bloody AI GF dark comedy "Companion."

Our gal Renate Reinsve ("The Worst Person in the World," "A Different Man") stars in a suspense film sparked by a parent-teacher conference, "Armand."

A surrealist comedy, linking Tehran and Winnepeg, "Universal Language."

That '90s Uplift: Bad Girls

 

GIRLS TOWN (1996) (B+) - Three young actresses give lived-in performances in this indie gem about high school seniors in Queens coping with the suicide of their close friend as the school year comes to an end. Lili Taylor is the big name, but she is matched by Bruklin Harris and Anna Grace, whose careers would be short-lived.

Taylor is Patti, a goombah-accented teen mom; Harris is straight-talking Angela; and Grace is cynical Emma. They have a close bond with melancholy Nikki (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor from "King Richard" and "Origin"), whose pill overdose will evoke an unusual reaction from the other three, who analyze the emotional tendons of their relationships with each other and act out by committing petty crimes (involving retribution against exes). 

All three share writing credit, and their workshopping and ad-libbing give the narrative a chatty authenticity. This feels like a true slice of life, a sly, angular take on the way in which a young person might cope with their first brush with death. The girls have favorite hangouts -- a ballfield dugout, a corner deli, the school bathroom -- and their baggy grunge duds. They also have a rapport that allows them to call each other out on their shit. Some of the best dialogue comes from brief one-on-ones with boys, with the girls confident enough to hold their own against their inferior rivals. One includes Michael Imperioli (Christopher on "The Sopranos"), who woos Patti, who is still beset by her baby-daddy (John Ventimiglia, Artie from "The Sopranos").

Taylor was pushing 30 by the time this came out, and one of the boys makes a meta reference to how old Patti looks. (The balding Ventimiglia was over 30 at the time.) Her accent -- borrowed a bit from Rosie Perez -- takes a bit of getting used to, but she pushes deep into her character and wins you over. Harris comes off as an intense Robin Givens, as Angela has few fucks to give. Grace, as Emma, does some heavy lifting emotionally. They are a potent team.

For a story that leans hard into sexual assault -- whether real or perceived, depending on each girl's point of view -- the overall vibe comes across as serious yet loose and life-affirming. The actresses' contributions are girded by a soundtrack Greek chorus by heavy hitters of the era -- Queen Latifah, P.J. Harvey, Luscious Jackson, Neneh Cherry and Salt-N-Pepa.  Director Jim McKay was coming off a series of R.E.M. videos and would go on to a solid career in TV. Here, he takes a documentary-like approach, shooting on the grimy streets of Queens in all their graffitied glory. 

You can't stream this anywhere, so look for a local screening of this restored document from the mid-'90s.

BONUS TRACKS

The loopy Luscious Jackson, live on "120 Minutes," with "Strongman":

 

Neneh Cherry, from 1992, "Somedays":

 

 

P.J. Harvey with the deep cut "Maniac":

 

 

And the melancholy anchor for the movie's climax, Queen Latifah touting "U.N.I.T.Y":

That '70s Drift - Asylum Seekers

 

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975) (A) - An overcast Sunday afternoon was the perfect circumstance to duck into the Guild Cinema to watch Jack Nicholson at the top of his game, leading one of the great ensemble films of all time. 

 

Bo Goldman and Lawrence Hauben adapt Ken Kesey's 1962 novel, and Milos Forman herds cats behind the camera in one of cinema's most deft blends of comedy and horror among the patients at a mental facility in Oregon. The production shifts the narrative point of view from stoic Chief Bromden to wise-cracking Randall McMurphy (Nicholson), who finagles a spot at the psychiatric facility to put off a prison term over his latest violent act that broke the law. (As he puts it, "I fight and fuck too much.")

McMurphy figures that, while he's gaming the system, he will vindicate the rights of the men who are suffering under the iron rule of mean Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). Kesey's story mines humor from the band of crazies without mocking them. And the story only gradually darkens, as it becomes apparent that the grip of the authorities will always be able to strangle any rebellion, no matter how organized or passionate. 

Nicholson and Fletcher were the Ali and Frazier of big-screen rivals, Nicholson with his arched eyebrow and rubber face, and Fletcher with that stony expression that haunts to this day. Around them are talented character actors, some who would become well known -- like  Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd (in his film debut) -- and others with vaguely familiar faces, such as Sydney Lassick (as Cheswick), William Redfield (Harding), Vincent Schiavelli (Fredrickson), Scatman Crothers (Turkle the guard) and Brad Dourif, also in his debut, in the critical role of stuttering young Billy Bibbit. Will Sampson towers over the proceedings, both literally and figuratively, as Chief, the true hero of the film. 

But it all revolves around Nicholson's reckless bad-boy McMurphy, who at times literally upends the ward with his riotously funny antics and blunt talk. He not only challenges authority but also corrupts his weaker co-horts, roping them into poker games, rowdy TV watching and a blowout Christmas party that leads to the horrific climactic events that will forever nag a viewer's psyche. 

Shifting that point of view from Chief to a generic omniscient one might upset purists, but it broadens the appeal -- perhaps the ultimate example of the key difference between books and movies. It just would not have worked nearly as well to trap us in one character's mind. Retooled, the story exudes confidence and becomes fundamentally entertaining. McMurphy's aphorisms are too numerous to replay here. (Of his goal in breaking Nurse Ratched, he proclaims, "In one week, I can put a bug so far up her ass she don't know whether to shit or wind her wristwatch.") When he leads the men in the pantomime of pretending to watch the World Series on the blank TV, or breaks them out for an illicit fishing trip, there is a palpable thrum of joy and rebellion among the giddy inmates. 

Meanwhile, Chief will break your heart as he finally opens up about his upbringing, referencing his alcoholic father and noting that "when he put the bottle up to his mouth, he didn't suck out of it, it sucked out of him." And throughout, Nurse Ratched's psychological browbeating of her charges is subtle, like the banality of evil, culminating in that shocking climax. 

There probably has never been a film quite like "Cuckoo's Nest," either before or after it. Fifty years after its release (and more than 60 years after its setting), its chilling message still seems sadly relevant. Go ahead and fight the system -- see how that works out for you.

The Best of 2024: How Does It Feel?

 

People keep asking me whether I've seen the new movie about Bob Dylan. I haven't, although there's a chance I'll sample it at some point out of morbid curiosity.

I'm not a fan of biopics, especially those involving lives I experienced in real time and people I once admired. It seems silly, for example, to watch Will Smith (a fine actor) pretend to be Muhammad Ali. And I've appreciated some of the work of Timothee Chalamet, but do I need to see America's Puppy do a karaoke imitation of the nascent folk-rock god? (For similar reasons, I don't need to see "Saturday Night" or "September 5.") Besides, Bob Dylan himself was the ultimate work of fiction; what's the point in fictionalizing a fiction -- or worse, trying to faithfully replicate it?

As I get older I get pickier and fussier. But I still believe in chapters, in turning the soil every few years. In recent year-end posts I've dumped on a lot of old favorites, as in the category below titled "It's Not You, It's Me." And so it can be refreshing to take a pass on familiar filmmakers and instead take on new favorites. 

For the past 10 years, no one has made movies like Sean Baker. His camera is agile (he shot 2015's "Tangerine" on an iPhone), and his characters are authentic, which helps bring out the humanity in groups like sex workers and poor people, without leering or wallowing in poverty porn. His "Anora," along with Jesse Eisenberg's "A Real Pain," showed a 360 command of moving-picture storytelling -- a fine touch for characters and dialogue and the pace of a narrative. They recalled some of the best of the American New Wave of the 1970s.

Some films below were debuts or were by directors whose work was new to me. "Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat" is probably a love-it-or-hate-it, two-and-a-half-hour deep dive and jive into the events in Congo around 1961. If I'd gone on a different night I might have walked out; instead, I gave myself to it and let it hypnotize me. It's one of five documentaries that made the Top 15.

It was also in 1961 (January) that Robert Zimmerman made his way to New York City, thirsting for fame. By 1965 he was a rock star. A decade later I discovered Dylan. It was fun to hop on the bandwagon and ride it into the '80s and '90s with him -- but it was a special treat to be able to sneak backward in time unearthing his catalog, scouring record bins and peeling away the layers of his personas. Nothing Hollywood produces can recapture that experience of discovering it for the first time. 

Maybe the kids will get a kick out of that era on the big screen and experience their own anthropological revelation, albeit in digital form. Maybe I'll see "A Complete Unknown" -- turns out, it is playing at the Guild Cinema the first weekend of March -- and perhaps I'll even like it. Am I an easy mark, after all? "Either I'm too sensitive, or else I'm getting soft."*

***

Below you'll find a ton of movies to sample, most from 2024, but some that hurtle you back decades. Where possible I point out where you can stream them (My main go-tos are HBO-Max, Mubi, Criterion, Netflix, and the library's free Hoopla.) Each film citation has a link to my original review.

THE TOP 15 of '24

  1. Anora. Sean Baker is the new master, and "Anora" is an assured, entertaining romp with a great cast. (In theaters.)

  2. Flipside. A journeyman filmmaker assembles his life's work into a moving visual collage and a profound rumination on the career paths we all take. (Hoopla/Criterion)

  3. A Real Pain. A pristine production by Jesse Eisenberg chronicles cousins revisiting their roots on a Holocaust tour of Poland, earning Best Screenplay. (Hulu)

  4. Bird. Andrea Arnold hits her peak and takes Best Director as she returns to her under-class roots alongside her 12-year-old avatar. (Mubi)

  5. Soundtrack to a Coup D'Etat. An inventive approach to a historical footnote. Let it wash over you, like a jazz performance would. (Kino Now)

  6. Between the Temples. Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane were exquisite in this melancholy tale of middle-aged gloom. (Netflix)

  7. Sugarcane. A harrowing exploration of the horrors brought by the Catholic Church on Indian schools in the 20th century. (Hulu)

  8. His Three Daughters. Sibling dynamics play out and recriminations blossom as the trio sit vigil for their dying father. (Netflix)

  9. How to Have Sex. An assured debut about the harrowing odyssey of a college girl seeking to lose her virginity. (Mubi)

10.  Terrestrial Verses. The quiet power of vignettes showing Iranians navigating their theocracy and bureaucracy. (Criterion)

11. We Were Famous, You Don't Remember. A pristinely rendered history of the '80s heartland band The Embarrassment (a band you almost certainly do not remember). (Night Flight Plus)

12. Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary. As much fun as you can have reminiscing about the softer side of rock from the mid-'70s to the mid-'80s. (HBO-Max)

13. Problemista. More delightful whimsy from the gloriously inventive mind of Julio Torres. (HBO-Max)

14. My Old Ass. A sweetly Canadian gem about our youthful choices and our adult regrets. (Amazon)

15. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World. "This sprawling, raunchy, rollicking black comedy, ostensibly about hyper-commercialization, captures the zeitgeist of our crude, unraveling modern culture." (Criterion)

JUST MISSED THE LIST

• The hodgepodge philosophical exercise "The Arc of Oblivion"
• Ken Loach unspools another heartfelt drama, "The Old Oak" (Hoopla)
  
• The subtly effective slow burn, "Teachers' Lounge" (Netflix)
  
• More gals comically behaving badly, "Babes" (Hulu)
  
• The inventive animation of "Flow" (In theaters)
  
• The simmering psycho-suspense of "Babygirl" (In theaters)
  
• The modern Mumblecore comedy "Free Time" (Hoopla)
  
• Daisy Ridley carrying the off-kilter black comedy "Sometimes I Think About Dying" (Mubi)
  

 

MORE TOP DOCS 

• BS High. A highly engaging study of a scam artist. (HBO-Max)
  
• Martha. An intriguing by-the-numbers portrait of better-living guru Martha Stewart. (Netflix)
  
• Dusty & Stones: A classic fish-out-of-water buddy flick.
  
• MoviePass MovieCrash: In this doc about a well-known con job, "the narrative is fascinating from beginning to end." (Netflix)
  
• Smoke Sauna Sisterhood: "It's as if an entire nation of women is exfoliating and expiating all of their hopes and sins." (Mubi)
  

 

TOP PERFORMANCES

• Nicole Kidman going deep in the psychological jangle of "Babygirl."
• Yura Borisov is the secret weapon in "Anora." And then Darya Ekamasova shows up as the icy mother-in-law.
  
• OMG, Mia Goth in "Maxxxine" and Esther Povitsky in "Drugstore June."
  
• Elizabeth Olsen stands out as she co-stars with Carrie Coon and Natasha Lyonne in "His Three Daughters."
• Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin are perfect road buddies in "A Real Pain."
• Barry Keoghan is all soul, and he melds with newcomer Nykiya Adams in "Bird."
• Comic welterweights Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane lived up to their billing in "Between the Temples."
  

 

GUILTY PLEASURES

• "Deadpool and Wolverine" pulverized us with its wordplay and the charm of Ryan Reynolds. (Disney+)
  
• "Maxxxine" completed the trilogy by director Ti West and star Mia Goth that started with "X" and "Pearl." (HBO-Max)
  
• "Hit Man" was a surprisingly effective misdirection from Richard Linklater. (Netflix)
  
• "Drugstore June": Esther Povitsky is hilarious as a would-be social-media influencer who endures a series of micro-agressions. (Hulu)
• Our sole Holy Crap of the year goes to the psychotic mess that was "The Substance." (Mubi)
  

 

THE LEFTOVERS

Some 2023 films we caught up with:  "A Thousand and One," about a mother fighting for custody of her son, would have cracked our top 12 if we had seen it in 2023 (Hulu) (Hat-tip: Tamara). ... Then there was the haunting sci-fi psych-out "The Five Devils" (Mubi); a mesmerizing personal memoir about family and reconciliation, "Sam Now" (Criterion); a belated release of a 1998 film from Cauleen Smith, which turned out to be her only feature, "Drylongso" (Criterion). ... We couldn't make it to the one-third mark of "Oppenheimer"; "The Holdovers" was too derivative for its own good. ... "Chile '76" was "a chilling lesson in defying both the political system and social castes" (Hoopla), and at three hours, "The Delinquents" was a fascinating character study (Mubi).

Wayback Machine: We finally gave a proper write-up to an all-time favorite, Lynne Ramsay's "Morvern Callar" with Samantha Morton (Amazon). ... We took a trip to the Aughts to explore the roots of Mumblecore; and we reveled in the 2009 documentary "Anvil: The Story of Anvil." ... "The Big Easy" is still a rollicking good time; we went back to 1934 for "It Happened One Night"; the 1953 Argentine classic "The Black Vampire" was the best of the Guild Cinema's summer film-noir festival (Criterion). ... We discovered a perfect nugget about the scrappy staff of an alt-weekly, "Between the Lines" from 1977 (Criterion/YouTube). ... The Coen brothers were in their prime with 2008's "Burn After Reading." ... And we dared to bring our modern sensibilities to "Blazing Saddles." (Most of those were via DVD.)

R.I.P: We gave a sendoff to TV legend Norman Lear by screening "The Night They Raided Minsky's"; on the music front, we were shaken by the death of the epic engineer Steve Albini; and we devoted three posts to double features in memory of the great Gena Rowlands. (Expect a similar tribute to David Lynch in the coming months.)

 

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME

(Well, maybe this time it is you. 

Some of our favorites let us down.)

 

• How do you make Julia Louis Dreyfus unwatchable? "Tuesday" figured it out.
  
• Jacques Audiard swung for the fences and hit a solid double with the frustrating "Emilia Perez."
• Wim Wenders bored us with his Boomer shtick in "Perfect Days"
  
• Diablo Cody wrote the embarrassing horror rom-com "Lisa Frankenstein"; we went on Valentine's Day and walked out.
  
• A quartet of films from newer filmmakers that were so sluggish and uneventful that we pulled the plug early (because Life Is Short): "Here" (not the Tom Hanks movie); "Mother, Couch"; "Janet Planet"; and "Evil Does Not Exist."
• "I Used to Be Funny" took Rachel Sennott and a great first act and botched it all.
  

COMING ATTRACTIONS

Here are a bunch we wanted to see but didn't get the chance:

• About Dry Grasses
• Union
• Slow
• Hard Truths
  
• Close Your Eyes
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
• The Idea of You

Join us in 2025 as we track down those titles and more of the finest movies you wouldn't otherwise think of watching.

BONUS TRACK

* - "If You See Her, Say Hello":

 

Doc Watch: The Haunted Past

 

PICTURES OF GHOSTS (B) - Brazil's Kleber Mendonca Filho ("Aquarius") takes a sentimental journey to his hometown of Recife to curate a fond nostalgia trip celebrating the origins of his love of film. He too often assumes that we'll be as wistful as he is when it comes to the movie houses of his youth.

Filho also spends the first third of this exercise wallowing in memories of his breakthrough feature "Neighboring Sounds," which he shot in his childhood home. It makes for a slow, unfocused start. (We bailed out of that meandering movie right before the halfway mark.) It isn't until he moves on to an archeological study of the seaside town's once-stately movie palaces that "Pictures of Ghosts" takes hold. 

 

Through archival footage we meet a veteran of one of the projection booths, who has since died. Now, recent footage shows the projection booth stuffed with merchandise, including stacks and stacks of kitchen mixers in their original packaging. Filho finds footage of his young self sweeping the lobby of the cinema where he works.

Filho divides this into three parts, each introduced by a peppy classic song. Otherwise, his camera wanders, dreamlike. We catch snippets of Carnival celebrations, old clips of men performing capoeira. Filho narrates with a ethereal delivery. Now in his 50s, he reminisces about how Recife used to be known for its combination smell of "tide, fruit and piss." Everything here comes off as bittersweet and fleeting.

DAHOMEY (B) - Alice Diop offers up a somewhat pompous but heartfelt chronicle of the repatriation of 26 works of art pillaged by France and returned to the people of Benin. Too often she takes art into the realm of artificial, with stylistic flourishes that might strain too many viewers' patience.

On the positive side, this is barely an hour long. Diop's camera is still and reverent in multiple scenes of the art pieces being prepared for shipping and then getting unboxed. Perhaps she intends for that to come off as sterile and numbing. She holds her establishing shots a few beats longer than you'd expect. Overall, there's just something off about the timing.

It isn't until the second half that things pick up with an extended scene of mostly young people in Benin having a debate about what the return of the art means: Is this something to be celebrated? How should it be displayed -- in an elite urban museum or out among the people? Do the pieces even have any meaning to the current residents? It plays out like a more interesting version of Frederick Wiseman's process documentaries.

To get to that fascinating debate, you have to make it through the first half, and you must get acquainted with the gravelly voice meant to embody the central piece, a statue of a king, as if it were narrating its own journey back to its homeland. The gimmick never really works. The dialogue spills over into pretentiousness; at one point, toward the end, it intones, "Within me resonates infinity." Get me rewrite! 

BONUS TRACKS

A sampling of songs from "Pictures of Ghosts," starting with Tom Ze's "Happy End" from 1972:

 

From 1977, macho Sidney Magal with "Meu Sangue Ferve por Voce":

Filho has fun with a cabdriver as they enjoy the sweet sounds of Herb Alpert's 1979 smooth-jazz hit "Rise":

Now and Then: Parenting 101

 We catch up with the latest from Andrea Arnold and a short she made 22 years ago.

BIRD (A) - Andrea Arnold -- returning to her working-class roots and a coming-of-age theme she has patented -- comes into her own as a visual storyteller with this crushingly authentic tale of a week in the life of a 12-year-old girl navigating poverty and finding her path. 

Nykiya Adams stars as the adolescent Bailey, who is told that her father, Bug (Barry Keoghan), barely an adult himself, plans to marry his girlfriend of three months, Kayleigh (Frankie Box), in exactly a week. Bug also has a teenage son that he had at 14 from another mother. That half-brother of Bailey's, Hunter (Jason Buda), is pining for his girlfriend, Moon, who will end up pregnant, pitting Hunter against her parents. 

But it is Bailey who is the center of the story. She is frustrated living in squalor with Bug along with Kayleigh and Kayleigh's toddler daughter, and she defiantly resists committing to wearing the ugly bridesmaid outfit picked out for her and impetuously cuts her beautiful locks short. She also meets an odd duck named Bird (Franz Rogowski), whose gentle qualities could be considered spiritual, if not magical. Early on he spends days perched on the roof of a nearby building, birdlike. 

Bailey is a caretaker -- she looks out for another set of three half-siblings that live nearby with their mother -- and an explorer who strives toward adult adventures. She also helps the naive Bird hunt down the parents who abandoned him when he was young. 

Arnold grounds this in the grimy world of the British underclass. Bug is a dreamer whose latest get-rich scheme is to sell the slime from a toad as a hallucinogenic. He discovers that the creature is more likely to produce the valuable slime if Bug plays mainstream music as opposed to the punk that he and his pals grew up on. It makes for a wonderful soundtrack, ranging from the urgent Fontaines D.C. to the elevator calm of Coldplay, with many singalongs featuring his bro pals. 

Arnold is in command of the visuals at every turn. You may shudder at how genuine the enveloping poverty and menace is. She invents unforgettable images -- whether it's Bird perched on that roof or Kayleigh curled up in bed assuring Bailey that she'll survive her first period or the handheld camera that races along with Bailey and Bug on their adventures. And then there is the fantasy and whimsy that comes out of nowhere, a stark contrast to Bailey's reality, as Bird eventually lives up to his name. 

It's hard to catalog all the elements that Arnold juggles and mixes into a moving narrative about human connection grounded in the natural and supernatural worlds. I wanted to knock a half-grade off for the fantasy elements, but I have to admit that Arnold is working at an elevated level. "Bird" is a wonder.

WASP (2003) (B+) - Zoe is a harried mother of four young children, including a baby, who yearns for a love life. is gruff and broke, prone to conflicts with the neighbors; several times her daughters complain that they haven't eaten a meal in days.

When Zoe (Natalie Press) meets an old beau, Dave (Danny Dyer), on the street, four little ones in tow, she lies and tells him that she is just babysitting, and she makes a date at the pub that night. She drags the kids along to the date, making them kill time outside while she flirts inside with Dave.

Twenty-six minutes is a perfect amount of time to play out this arc, as if it were an episode of a dark sitcom. The wasp of the title shows up to bookend the film. In the first instance, Zoe frees it out a window of their flat; the second appearance presents a bit of peril that brings events to the boiling point. 

Press is compelling as the overburdened still-too-young mum who cleans up super-cute for her date at the pub, and while you yearn along with her in sympathy, her recklessness is alarming, and you might tsk along with the neighbors. Arnold's camera nervously flits about her and the kids, jangling the viewers' nerves along with Zoe's. 

BONUS TRACKS

Let's delve into "Bird's" soundtrack. Here is "A Hero's Death" from Fontaines D.C.:

 

Coldplay's "Yellow" recurs during multiple karaoke scenes as a sort of anthem for the toad crew:

 

And, from a pivotal point near the film's climax, "Lucky Man" by the Verve:

R.I.P., David Lynch

 

David Lynch died last week at 78, having altered the way we look at movies. After much meditation, we have settled on a tentative lineup of re-viewings of his best films. Like we did with Gena Rowlands last year, we will revisit some titles and offer a retrospective in the coming weeks.

Meantime, here is a favorite David Lynch moment. From the projection loft of the Guild Cinema, it's the notice Lynch sent out to accompany "Inland Empire" (which we probably won't screen again) as a friendly instruction to those projecting his film:

 

I Know What You Did ...

 

LAST SUMMER (B-minus) - Ah, those lazy days. Catherine Breillat, one of the touchstones of modern French cinema, phones in a familiar story of forbidden love -- here it is a professional woman who sleeps with her teenage stepson. It's an idea that's been trite for decades and almost a parody of porn searches.

Lea Drucker ("The Blue Room," "Two of Us") stars as Anne, a lawyer who is shown at the beginning of the film successfully litigating a rape case on behalf of the victim and then finalizing arrangements for a teenage girl to gain custody under her father, who looks a bit sketchy. She is impeccably dressed, with soccer-mom hair; she would be considered "According to Jim" hot. She doesn't think much of her dumpy husband, Pierre (Olivier Raboudin), a beefy guy who is constantly whining about his own corporate job.

 

Enter Theo (Samuel Kircher), a troubled teen whom Pierre has ignored most of the kid's life. Theo joins the household that also includes the couple's pair of adopted little girls. It takes about half of the 104-minute film for Anne and Theo to start to hook up. I know the heart wants what it wants, and bizarre couplings happen all the time, but there is something improbable about Anne, a composed, successful woman, falling for a cipher of a teenage dropout. Breillat's camera likes to linger on Theo as he smirks and broods. Kircher comes from the Timothy Chalamet school of scrawny disaffection. (During one lovemaking session, Anne marvels to Theo, "You're so thin.")

Breillat seems fascinated by the faces of these three people during various bouts of sex -- first the husband as he conducts an obligatory servicing of his wife; then Theo, who doesn't seem to be much more skilled at the art; and then Anne, late in the film, as she achieves what apparently is the quietest, most subtle orgasm imaginable. The connection between Anne and Theo just never seems real.

That's not the only disconnect between the narrative and modern life. Anne is rarely seen working, even though she likely has a job that is much more demanding than her husband's. When Anne's sister catches her and Theo making out, there are few meaningful repercussions from that revelation. In one scene, Breillat lingers on a car trip coming home from the beach with Theo and the girls, and we get an extended spin of a Sonic Youth song from 35 years ago, a sharp reminder that Breillat is stuck in the past. This feels like a cable TV movie from that pre-millennium era, and despite a provocative tactical move by Anne at the movie's climax, none of this feels weighty enough to matter.

BONUS TRACK

Sonic Youth, "Dirty Boots"