THE ARC OF OBLIVION (A-minus) - Writer-director Ian Cheney has a lot on his mind, and he unloads his thoughts in scattered fashion into this engaging documentary ostensibly about how we preserve human history. His heavily curated film is also one big McGuffin: He commissions the building of an ark on his parents' property, intending to fill it with objects, documents, ephemera -- anything that he thinks might mark our time here on Earth and which might be useful to future nerds.
That shtick -- the creation of a noble wooden vessel -- can wear thin at times, and Cheney inserts himself way too often in the proceedings. But those questionable choices are more than compensated for by his inclusion of a parade of talking heads, all of whom provide fascinating insights on a wide variety of topics.
We meet filmmaker Kristen Johnson ("Cameraperson") and, even better, her brother, a paleontologist who waxes poetic about how fossils are formed and discovered. There is an expert on limestone, David Hoch, who taught me during the movie how the method of heating limestone creates a glow that accommodates wall-shadow projections (it's where we get the phrase "in the limelight"). We meet cave specialist Bogdan Onac, who lectures extensively about bat guano. There is also an artist whose house was destroyed in a hurricane; a couple who photograph old cemeteries from the Jim Crow era; and the sawyer lovingly plying his craft as the ark slowly takes shape. Even documentary legend Werner Herzog (an executive producer) stops by to put an exclamation point on a film that clearly was inspired by his lifelong pursuit of truth and quirk. ("Fitzcarraldo" is a natural point of comparison.)
The surface topic involves the preservation of our digital world, but as Cheney meanders off the beaten path, he excavates ideas about humans and nature and how lives and concepts are preserved over centuries and even millennia. This might be a pop-philosophical exercise that could tick off some intellectual aficionados who could dismiss this as undisciplined surface-scratching noodling.
But don't overthink it. Cheney certainly doesn't. His technique is not so much HD as it is ADHD. He's all over the map, literally and figuratively, as he follows his nose to whatever places interest him. He then dumps it all into this 105-minute hodgepodge. This is a random movie by a filmmaker who tossed together a chopped salad of brain droppings and visual whims. Not everything has to be neatly packaged.
HOW TO HAVE SEX (B+) - Cinematographer Molly Manning Walker makes her writing-directing debut with this deceptively smart story of a teenage virgin's awkward transition to hook-up culture during a wild spring break with her two London pals on a Greek island. Mia McKenna-Bruce is understated but powerful as Tara as the afterthought of the friend zone with her two alpha female pals.
Tara is wide-eyed and inexperienced, but she has that yearning you might remember from your teen years, the ache to be cooler than you are. She starts a flirtation with a boy from the next hotel balcony over, Badger (Shaun Thomas), who also plays second fiddle to his handsomer mate, Paddy (Samuel Bottomley). At the halfway point of this bacchanal, Tara goes off with Paddy, and they have sex, but it's a bit vague just how consensual it was and whether Tara feels more violated or just more underwhelmed by the overhyped moment.
Newcomer Molly Manning Walker, a veteran cinematographer, pens a deceivingly intelligent script. She keeps the dread level elevated, but we never feel like any sort of tragedy has occurred. She also, interestingly, shuns nudity -- there is plenty of young flesh on display, but not a breast or a penis to be spotted, making this oddly but satisfyingly chaste in a way. The kids have thick working-class London accents, and this was screened with subtitles, which detracts a bit from the appreciation of the agile banter Tara engages in with her randier besties, the controlling Skye (Laura Peake) and the empathetic Em (Enva Lewis).
At the end of the trip, McKenna-Bruce conveys a range of emotions, as you wonder whether Tara is traumatized or just different, her eyes and mind opened to the pitfalls of transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. Along the way, it's fun to watch these young adults carouse and catcall each other as their immature bodies indulge in adult substances during a memorable weekend. This shares DNA with other wild-weekend entries like "Monday" and "Suntan," all sharper than you'd expect.
FLY WITH ME (B) - From PBS' "American Experience" comes this by-the-numbers history of women in the air industry, from World War II-era nurses to the assembly line stewardess of the early jet age to the flight attendants organizing into what is now one of the strongest unions in the country.
At 112 minutes, this feels bulky. Most of the first third is taken up with archival footage of the early days of flight and airline service, and then there is a detour near the halfway mark to explore civil-rights issues for African-American pioneers in the industry, which feels like a shallow gloss. That leads to the the Title VII protections against sex discrimination. The actual feminist and labor movements don't congeal until the final third.
But the pioneering women are fun to hang out with. Their stories are engaging, and it's encouraging to know that they survived decades of sexism. You get the sense that some of the fun stuff about being a swinin' stewardess in the '60s and '70s might have ended up on the cutting-room floor in order to maintain a sobriety and sense of decorum for this by-the-books documentary.
BONUS TRACK
From the closing credits of "How to Have Sex," Romy with "Strong":
The London hipsters Bar Italia stopped in town on a school night this week. They are much more engaging live than on record. I should say that their music is much more engaging live; the band members are not engaging at all. They have this shtick where they ignore the audience, which is an odd affectation.
The band seemed to strive for a Velvet Underground hipness -- icy, ironically detached, backlit. But there music is squarely '90s-derivative, in the best sense of the concept of borrowing and molding sounds. They offer a strain of shoegaze like "Lush," but also atonal post-punk like the Mekons. You can also hear the Pixies and Pavement in their song structures. Guitars occasionally ring like they did in Guided by Voices songs in the late '90s. What sometimes feels limp on their recordings pops with more edge in person
The three main players all share vocals -- Sam Fenton and Jezmi Fehmi on guitars, and Nina Cristante, the ostensible front person. I wondered at first why her vocals were buried most of the night, but it became apparent that she is thin in both body and voice -- more Liz Phair than Kim Gordon. But the band was tight. Their rhythm section is apparently the province of hired guns. Whoever their drummer was stole the show at times, with tight timekeeping and muscular fills.
When they came out for an encore, the audience needled them to the point of finally responding. Cristante muttered "You're ruining it," which came off more like an admission that the band is trapped in a somewhat paralyzing routine. Maybe we helped them find an exit ramp from the stifling purview of dilettantes to a warmer live experience.
BONUS TRACKS
One of their best songs, "Punkt," has a bit of a "Bull in the Heather" vibe:
A two-song encore ended with the trippy "Skylinny":
They closed their main set with the anthemic "Worlds Greatest Emoter." Look closely at the beginning of this live version, and you can see Cristante actually break character and acknowledge the crowd:
Here they are at a place actually called the Velvet Underground, in Toronto, with the hypnotic "Nurse!":
Here's a full live set from Los Angeles last June:
We will honor Ken Loach ("Kes," "I, Daniel Blake") by watching his final film, about a gruff northern England town dealing with an influx of Syrian refugees, "The Old Oak."
Radu Jude ("Aferim," "Uppercase Print," "Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn") is inconsistent among the Romanian directors, so we'll be a bit trepidatious over his nearly three-hour hectic romp, "Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World."
DRUGSTORE JUNE (B+) - If the title "Clueless" hadn't already been taken, it would have perfectly suited this manic romp about a would-be social-media influencer who helps investigate a break-in at the drugstore where she works (to use the term loosely). Esther Povitsky, who co-wrote the script, is very funny as a hare-brained 20-something whose existence is stitched together by a continuous series of perceived microagressions against her.
Povitsky carries the film by her sheer energy, as she finds a troubled soul within her airhead persona to make us care about June's frivolous life. The one-liners fly by (June says, "I don't like the word 'horny,' so I say 'hot 'n' ready' instead because it sounds cuter and it reminds me of pizza"), and the plot zips along with an amusing wit. June, a junk-food junkie and struggling video wannabe (she is constantly performing for her June Squad), is stuck emotionally on Davey (Haley Joel Osment), her ex-boyfriend from their shared land of fast-food joints. She slacks off as an assistant to the drugstore pharmacist (Bobby Lee), and she annoys the detectives when she insists on trying to solve the break-in.
The supporting cast is top-notch, including Jackie Sandler and Al Madrigal as the detectives, Beverly D'Angelo and James Remar as June's parents, Brandon Wardell as her slacker gamer brother, and Matt Walsh as a hoodlum. But it is Povitsky who terrorizes the screen as the entitled millennial whose mind is warped by the modern internet world. Director (and co-writer) Nicholaus Goossen rides this bucking bronco and corrals it all into 91 entertaining minutes. Like June, turn off your brain and enjoy the ride. It's a lot of fun.
UNREST (B-minus) - It often feels like this period curiosity is on the brink of being profound or revelatory. But the polemic about workers just kind of plods along while staying just fascinating enough to lure you through to the end. It's the first full-length feature from Swiss writer-director Cyril Schaublin, who spends too much time trying to be artsy, at the expense of telling a consistently compelling story.
Set in the late 1800s, "Unrest," which borrows that term from watch-making, tells the story of a Russian map-maker, Pyotr (Alexei Evstratov), who visits a small Swiss town that is home to a watch factory. At the factory, workers are radicalized in the era of open anarchism, as their work is hyper-scrutinized by bosses literally standing over their shoulders wielding stopwatches as the workers meticulously assemble pocket watches. The workers mostly speak French, and management converses in German, which suggests an us-vs.-them mentality.
The main worker is Josephine (Clara Gostynski), and she will cross paths with Pyotr. There are some interesting ideas at work here, especially the various aspects of technology of the time that echo into our modern world. The use of the telegraph parallels our use of email; Pyotr is essentially a beta version of Google Maps; and a new compact alarm clock is unveiled as if it were the latest iPhone.
But Schaublin's visual choices are perpetually frustrating, especially his insistence on shooting scenes from a long distance. In some scenes you can't tell which small figure in the frame is talking. At times the "action" in the frame gets dwarfed by subtitles. It's annoying, and it trips up the narrative, which never really coheres.
But there is something here, and "Unrest," fractured as it is, stakes a claim in the pantheon of films about workers' rights. If you are willing to put in your own effort and help stitch the ideas together, it's fun to watch a moment in history that seemed to be on the brink of a modern world of technological marvels.
KAREN DALTON: IN MY OWN TIME (2020) (B) - A couple of Art Department veterans team up behind the camera for the first time to explore the sad tale of Karen Dalton a blues and folk singer who never broke big in the '60s or '70s and sabotaged her own career by abusing drugs and alcohol.
Dalton was part of the burgeoning folk scene in New York's Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, along with Bob Dylan and the gang. But her sound was much more bluesy -- with even a tinge of gospel -- than the Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore" crowd offered. She sounded a lot like Billie Holiday (though she apparently did not like that comparison), with a raspy voice dripping with melancholy.
Dalton made some poor life choices. She got married and had a child as a teen and chose her relationships poorly; one of them led to a knocked-out front tooth, which certainly didn't help her come off as photogenic. She recorded albums in 1969 and 1971, and Woodstock's Michael Lang tried to break her out with another album, but Dalton didn't finish it. She instead eventually ended up in upstate New York near Woodstock, where she lived out her years quietly, eventually dying of AIDS.
Apparently a lousy mother, Dalton struggled to have healthy relationships with the children she had young. Her daughter Abbe is the main talking head here, providing an important perspective. Nick Cave shows up to convey the dramatic impact that Dalton's music had on him. Writer-directors Richard Peete and Robert Yapkowitz march through the story chronologically, and they pause the proceedings whenever one of Dalton's recordings is featured, giving each one a title card and a respectful playing time. It is not until the end that they finally reveal one of Dalton's own original compositions, an effective technique after filling the movie with examples of Dalton's diary entries, which early on are compelling but gradually grow less coherent in later years.
It would be nice if Dalton wasn't such a pathetic figure. It's hard to maintain interest in a junkie as a main subject. This is a woeful tale, but Dalton's troubled soul can generate empathy at times. And the music is haunting.
BONUS TRACKS
A beautiful song, written by Dalton's third husband, Richard Tucker, about leaving New York and heading back to a life of poverty in Colorado, "Are You Leaving for the Country?":
Here is Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe," which Dalton was one of the first to record:
Nick Cave singles this song out as altering his musical universe, "Something on Your Mind":
Perhaps a fitting epitaph, "A Little Bit of Rain," written by frequent collaborator Fred Neil:
SAM NOW (B+) - A true labor of love, this decades-spanning documentary project tracks half brothers and their relationship with one of their mothers who abandoned her family years ago. It is powered by clips from director Reed Harkness' youthful insurgent videos and an urgent garage-punk soundtrack.
Harkness was nearly a decade older than Sam, who was 14 when Sam's mother, Jois, abandoned him and brother Jared. Harkness made numerous videos of Sam when they were kids, especially silly superhero films, and he uses that momentum to start filming this documentary about 20 years ago when Sam was about 17 and wondering about the whereabouts of his mother.
Harkness turns this into a gonzo road movie, slapping together those vintage clips and goosing them with stop-action graphics and those nerve-jangling psych-rock tunes on the soundtrack. Sam ages into adulthood, and the story deepens as the subject works through his emotional baggage. We see Jois in clips, and she'll eventually surface, and it's interesting to see that while this is a classic tale of abandonment, it's also a tribute to how families cope with whatever curveballs are tossed their way.
It's not a Shakespearean tragedy, but the film earns a place among the best of the Ordinary People genre that I identified with trailblazer Doug Block and his family chronicle "51 Birch Street." Harkness has a big heart and a true gift for visual collages. This homage to his troubled brother never feels self-indulgent, and it's often a joy to watch.
BONUS TRACKS
The Sonics are the star of the soundtrack. Here is "Psycho":
And the Sonics again with the '60s garage classic "Shot Down":
From Oregon, Dead Moon with their lo-fi grunge-era "D.O.A.":
Mid-Nineties Japanese punk band Teengenerate with "Dressed in Black":
A palate-cleanser, Smog's spare, plaintive "Rock Bottom Riser":
The night I saw this film, I had a dream about having long ago invented,
with some friends, a martial-arts throwing star that had one of its
point fashioned as a phillips-head screwdriver, which we had used to
break-ins in the name of civil disobedience. It struck me that I had a
dream that created a false memory. Conversely, this film starts with a false
memory that creates a dream for the title character.
MORVERN CALLAR (2002) (A) - This film has haunted me since I first saw it at the 2002 Santa Fe Film Festival. In the opening scene, Morvern Callar (Samantha Morton) is near-catatonic in an apartment ominously lit by Christmas decorations while her boyfriend lies dead on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood, a suicide. We, as viewers, are initially as discombobulated as she appears to be; Morvern goes off to a Christmas party and otherwise wanders around town for several scenes, before she finally deals with her devastating situation.
When she finally deals with the tragic scene, Morvern not only scrubs the apartment but she also reviews her boyfriend's suicide note, which directs her to the latest novel he has written. The note asks her to submit it to a publisher, and she does so -- except first she strips his name from it and puts her own on it, and then sends it off.
Morvern works a dead-end job at a grocery store in her small seaside hometown with her ditzy best pal, Lanna (Kathleen McDermott). With a little cash bequeathed to her from the dead man's bank account, Morvern, who is keeping the boyfriend's death a secret (she lies and says he left her), suggests a warm-weather getaway to Ibiza. Off she and Lanna go, with Lanna unaware that her friend's actions will be skewed by grief, guilt and a distorted sense of freedom. When a publisher shows interest in the book, it begins to dawn on Morvern that she might be able to truly escape the doldrums of her existence.
"Morvern Callar" is one of the earliest films from Socttish master Lynne Ramsay ("Ratcatcher," "We Need to Talk About Kevin"), whose stories always feel a little off-kilter and spurred by a sense of urgency. This is her best film, She shoots guerrilla-documentary style as the young women let loose in paradise. But Morvern is haunted the whole time -- not only by death but by the hope of ultimate escape -- reminded of her relationship by the mix tape that she listens to on an old-fashioned Walkman. This is the first film I can recall that toggles between presenting the songs as full sound (as if we had the earbuds in our own ears) and the tinny version we hear whenever Morvern takes her earbuds out. It's a jarring metaphor for us being in Morvern's head, as well as a reminder of her struggles between recognizing the recent past and letting it go.
Morton, in her early 20s at the time, hints at endless layers of emotion and angst. At the time she was on the verge of breaking through with "In the Bedroom," though she's had a rather quiet, steady career. Here she is the perfect vessel for Ramsay's fascinating, meandering narrative, which plays out angularly, as if the filmmaker is as curious as we are about where this story will end up. There is a surprising amount of dark humor throughout. At times this feels like a slapstick buddy-road movie, with clever sight gags and callbacks.
It's not all gloom and doom. It can be arch and thought-provoking. In the end, this bruising film is about a small-town young woman disoriented by trauma but, like a Sofia Coppola heroine, lured by a glimmer of hope of privilege that sudden success might bring her way. It's riveting from beginning to end. I won't reveal the final song on the mixtape that Morvern listens to, but know that it is perfect.
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* Note: This time I watched the film (via Criterion streaming) with subtitles in order to catch all the nuances of the heavy brogues by most of the characters. The first time I saw it, in a packed theater in Santa Fe, we didn't get subtitles. My favorite moment of the film-going experience came when -- as most of us were obviously struggling to pick up the dialogue -- a guy behind me leaned over to his date and whispered, not "What did she say?" but rather "What's a 'fortnight'?"
BONUS TRACKS
The soundtrack is full of cool sounds, a truly wonderful classic mixtape of bangers, as the kids say. There are a bunch of songs by krautrock pioneers Can. Here is "Spoon":
Sharing a vibe with the music of Mum, here is Aphex Twin with the hypnotic "Nannou":
Never pass up an excuse to spin Lee Hazlewood (with Nancy Sinatra), "Some Velvet Morning":
Another coincidence, like the dream: The day after I watched the movie, a friend randomly sent a video of a band once touted by a mutual friend, Boards of Canada. I'd never heard of them. I later went back to check the "Morvern Callar" soundtrack, and there they were. Spooky, like this track, the trippy "Everything You Do Is a Balloon":
And this one's pretty, "You Can Fall" by Broadcast:
THE INNOCENT (B) - Writer-director Louis Garrel stars as Abel, a young widower who grows concerned after his mom, who teaches acting in a prison, marries an inmate, who starts acting shady after his release. Abel indulges his anxiety by surveilling Michel (Roschdy Zem), only to get caught up in Michel's criminal shenanigans.
There is an air of melancholy and gloom that pervades this otherwise light-hearted French farce. That includes Abel's mom, Silvie (Anouk Grinberg), who has finally found true love and resents Abel's interference in her relationship. Then there is Abel's friend Clemence (Noemie Merlant), who lords her love of casual sex over Abel's mournful celibacy.
Some of this doesn't quite add up, and the shifts in tone can be annoying, but the four principal actors (Zem especially) create nuanced characters whose interactions are cleverly shape-shifting, building a momentum that helps this zip along at 98 minutes. A twist halfway through -- drawing Abel and Clemence into a play-acting scenario that serves as a therapeutic breakthrough to their relationship -- provides a narrative spark that revives the film and draws us in to a sober but fun organized-crime caper. Garrel, the son of celebrated filmmaker Philippe, shows an easygoing style and an ear for minor-key storytelling.
AVA (2017) (B+) - Ava is 13 years old and starting to lose her sight, mostly her night vision. And then along comes a boy, and she seems determined to seize the opportunity to lust for life while she still can.
Noee Abita, with an engaging pout, resembles a young Adele Exarchopoulos, and her big eyes are expressive and a bit judging. Her feisty mother (Laure Calamy) urges Ava to indulge her budding desires. Ava meets the troubled young immigrant, Juan (Juan Cano), on the beach and flirts with him but also covets his dog. When she learns that Juan has been injured and is hiding out on the beach, she tends to his wound and falls for his rugged charms. She is thrilled to go on a solo mission to retrieve Juan's ID card to help him stay ahead of the law.
This coming-of-age rage tale comes from Lea Mysius, who co-wrote the fascinating "Paris, 13th District" and more recently directed Exarchopoulos in "The Five Devils." She has great confidence behind the camera, and a looseness to her narrative flow. Abita (riveting in "Slalom"), was nearly an adult while playing a 13-year-old girl, and she struts ferociously at times, especially during an inspired scene in which Ava and Juan paint their nubile bodies in mud, wield sticks and a shotgun, and rob beachgoers in broad daylight, like a feral bare-chested update of Bonnie and Clyde.
That jaunt typifies the danger and dread which permeates the film, even though the movie overall can be quite sweet and insightful. Mysius crafts a climax that would sit well in a typical action film. We watch wide-eyed, knowing that our hungry young heroine someday will lose the opportunity to fully experience such exploits.
We tracked down two obscure documentaries about two obscure bands, via Night Flight Plus:
OUT OF TIME: THE MATERIAL ISSUE STORY (B) - Material Issue was one of those bands that had every element necessary to break big, and but for a few cups of coffee on MTV in the early '90s, the big break just never came. This detailed and earnest documentary tells the story of the rise and tragic fall of the power-pop band's leader, Jim Ellison, and the mates he left hanging.
The first third is an origin story of a hard-working and talented trio who met during their college years in Chicago. Ellison wrote the songs and fronted the band, which also featured Ted Ansani on bass and Mike Zelenko on drums. They were regular guys from working class families, putting out their early songs on their own label run out of Ellison's suburban home. By 1990 they were featured on MTV's hip Sunday night show "120 Minutes," with the irresistibly catchy "Valerie Loves Me" and "Diane." Former host Matt Pinfield shows up here as an ardent fan to this day.
Talking heads (including Ansani and Zelenko) unwrap the history of the band, whose second and third albums produced diminishing returns, eventually leaving them without a recording contract. Producer Mike Chapman (Blondie, Sweet, the Knack) was working with the band on a fourth album when that tragedy struck. He, too, to this day gets emotional over how things turned out. Chicago bigwigs who give props include Steve Albini, Joe Shanahan (the club Metro), and newspaper critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis (they still host "Sound Opinions" on radio). Stories and footage of Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen showing up in the studio to expertly lay down guitar tracks add a jolt to the movie.
This clocks in at barely an hour, and the tight running time allows for a patented VH-1 "Behind the Music" three-part arc. Director Balin Schneider, an L.A. journalist, does his homework, spending time with Ellison's family and with Ansani and Zelenko, who disappear from the film after the tragedy unfolds, as if they didn't want to talk about it on camera. What shines through, though, is the music, smart and shimmery and infused with hooks that should have spawned years of hits.
WE WERE FAMOUS, YOU DON'T REMEMBER: THE EMBARRASSMENT (A-minus) - Sometimes dismissed as cheeky DIY pop pranksters, Wichita, Kansas' the Embarrassment had some serious chops that could have carried them the career that R.E.M. had. Instead, they burned hot on the fringes of the indie scene for a few years in the early '80s and then burned out after releasing a bunch of singles and one album, never to record again. Instead, their brand of "blister pop" leaves them just fondly remembered legends of the old Lawrence college-town music scene.
This documentary, by newcomers Daniel Featherston and Danny Szlauderback, is so much more than history lesson about a cult band from 40 years ago. It is a celebration of a special moment in time and a paean to ingrained emotions that are implanted in our youth and quietly cherished over the decades. Author Thomas Frank (What's the Matter With Kansas?), as usual, articulates this concept the best in a few talking-head interviews. It's that idea of treasuring the memory of that one band you loved that nobody has ever heard of except for those few people who were there. Other contributions come from contemporaries and admirers Grant Hart of Husker Du, Freedy Johnston and Evan Dando.
Two of the band members grew up as childhood buddies, and the core group formed in 1979 in the vast wasteland of the nation's heartland. Each man shows a degree of wistfulness in contemporary interviews -- singer John Nichols, guitarist Bill Goffrier, bassist Ron Klaus, and drummer Brent "Woody" Giessmann, who would land on his feet banging the snare with the Del Fuegos out of Boston. It's a shame that they broke up, but each man seems to have had a fulfilling career since.
The music itself stands on its own, and you could put it up against any post-punk release around the turn of the '80s, and the band's arch chord structures closely echo those of R.E.M., which broke through with its first album right after the Embarrassment called it quits, as if there was a soul transfer from Wichita to Athens. Footage from a concert at their headquarters -- a funky old bank next to the train tracks -- is threaded throughout the documentary, and it is a repeated reminder of how infectious their music was and how charming the band could be. One observer struggles to come up with a simple description of the music and ends up calling it "propulsive, danceable, jangly, angular goof rock."
I didn't discover the Embarrassment until their compilation album "Heyday" was release in the late '90s, so I can't claim any connection to that magical Wichita/Lawrence heyday. But I can appreciate what Frank and others experienced, how the songs soaked into their DNA, and how they can honor that burst of creativity and joy without sounding like pathetic nostalgia whores. It was a special time. This movie makes you wish you had been there. And it reminds you that, even if you weren't there, you were somewhere, and if you can conjure up your own former zeitgeist moments, then you are lucky to be able to revisit that happy place.
BONUS TRACKS
Let's start with Material Issue's first hit, "Valerie Loves Me":
"What Girls Want" live on the Dennis Miller talk show:
My favorite Embarrassment song is "Elizabeth Montgomery's Face":
One-upping Wire on their debut single, "Sex Drive":
And we can't forget Art Carney -- "Celebrity Art Party" (R.E.M. came up with the same ringing guitar riffs out in Athens, Ga., around the same time):
THE BIG EASY (1986) (A-minus) - Movies don't get much more fun than this deep dive into Cajun high jinks. Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin are a lot of fun as a local homicide lieutenant and district attorney, respectively, who are on opposite sides of the law but have an undeniable attraction.
Quaid is Remy McSwain, who counts police corruption as a heritage. Barkin is Anne Osborne is a fish out of water trying to keep track of the corruption that is rampant in the New Orleans police department. Remy has a boyish charm that is hard to resist, even if he is forever on the take and looking the other way as mobsters massacre each other. Anne is determined to get to the bottom of the cause of the pileup of bodies, but she tends to be distracted by Remy and his washboard abs.
The supporting cast has a blast wallowing in the Cajun culture. Grace Zabriskie is captivating as Remy's mom; Charles Ludlam as the rascally pint-sized defense attorney; John Goodman as a detective who carries an arsenal of weapons; Ned Beatty as the retiring cop who dates Mama; and soul singer Solomon Burke as one of the gang leaders. And then there's the soundtrack. I'm pretty sure I wore out my CD back in the day. From the Dixie Cups' "Iko Iko" to Buckwheat Zydeco's "Ma 'Tit Fille," plus Professor Longhair, Aaron Neville and BeauSoleil, the sounds are infectious and embedded in the narrative.
You might argue that the local references to New Orleans culture is a tad overdone, as Hollywood likes to do. And the carpet-baggers do lay the accents and Mardi Gras references on thick. But the story is a juicy one, with nods to classic corruption capers, and everyone has so much fun chewing on the dialogue. It's funny and has heart. And Quaid and Barkin are hard to resist. This comes from writer-director Jim McBride ("David Holzman's Diary," "Breathless"), who co-wrote the snappy script with Daniel Petrie Jr. ("Beverly Hills Cop") and Jack Baran ("Great Balls of Fire").
BONUS TRACKS
Some samplings from "The Big Easy" soundtrack, starting with Buckwheat Zydeco:
PLAN 75 (B-minus) - Maybe it's me, but I've been having trouble making real connections with movies that are intended to pack an emotional punch. This drama features a near future (or alternative present) where the Japanese government offers an incentive to people 75 and older to submit to euthanasia, a program intended to relieve the burden of an aging population.
It focuses on Michi (Chieko Baisho), who is shown losing her hotel-cleaning job at the beginning of the movie, and her decision to enter the program, which we learn about through snippets of TV ads that occasionally pop up in the back ground of scenes. We also spend time with a couple of young people selling Plan 75 (one of whom who has an uncle entering the program) and a former co-worker of Michi's who is a Filipino immigrant worried about getting surgery back home for her 5-year-old daughter.
It would have helped to have maintained focus on just one or two characters here. As it is, it is difficult to get fully invested in Michi's fate, especially since she is rather blase about the matter. This is a debut feature from Chie Hayakawa (co-writing with Jason Gray, normally a translator), and she definitely knows how to create a mood. There just needs to be a more compelling narrative to go with that mood and the nuanced performance of her placid star. Sometimes showing the banality of bureaucratic evil is just banal.
HERE (B-minus) - Movies don't get duller that this lethargic contemplation of human connections. It's about as exciting as watching moss grow -- moss being one of the key characters in the limp, laconic drama from Belgian writer-director Bas Devos ("Ghost Tropic").
Construction worker Stefan (Stefan Gota) makes a pot of soup from the dregs of his refrigerator in anticipation of his four-week vacation back in his homeland of Romania. Over the next few days, while waiting for his car to get fixed, he gifts Tupperwares of soup to various people, including the mechanic and Stefan's sister. While on his haphazard rounds he happens to meet a woman, Shuxiu (Liyo Gong), who studies mosses. In a typical film this would qualify as a meet-cute, as the pair cross paths several times and seem to make a good match.
Apparently this is supposed to represent the "organic" development of a relationship, whether it turns out someday to be romantic or platonic. The problem is the film rarely rises above the excitement of watching moss grow. It's not particularly funny or even heart-warming. It just exists. Sometimes it's enough to present a slice of life and move on. Here it feels too much like Devos has just the bare bones of an idea and he's stretching the soup into some pretty thin gruel.
DRYLONGSO (1998) (B+) - This is more like it. Cauleen Smith's debut feature, coming out of film school, turned out to be her only full-length film. That's a shame, because she showed a lot of potential with this visually interesting tale of a photography student chronicling the dangers faced by young black men in Oakland in the late 1990s.
She follows a restless young woman named Pica (Toby Smith) who insists on taking Polaroids even though she is taking a class on 35mm photography, and she's woefully behind on finishing her final presentation. She is distracted by a gloomy job pasting up posters on walls, and she is disturbed by society's targeting of young men who, like now, too often ended up in the criminal justice system or dead on the streets.
Smith is a low-key but sturdy force of nature as an artist and an advocate. A young man she falls for soon ends up dead at the hands of a serial slasher terrorizing Oakland's west side. At the start of the film she also meets a woman getting slapped around by a boyfriend and lends a hand to the woman, Tobi (April Barnett), who later turns up dressed as a young man as a way to avoid the pitfalls that women face. Pica and Tobi form a strong bond that artfully blurs traditional gender roles or expectations.
The film is full of one-off performances by non-actors. Salim Akil is particularly crucial as Pica's professor, who nudges and nurtures in perfect proportion. (Akil co-wrote the script with Smith.) Pica's mom (Channel Schafer) likes to laze on the couch and open the house to massive poker parties, presenting a challenge to Pica's ability to focus on her art and future.
Smith actually has a compelling plot to unfold, and she meanders pleasantly to a satisfying conclusion after an efficient 86 minutes. No one associated with the film went on to have a breakthrough career, as if this were intended to be an urban bookend to a previous generation's "Spring Night, Summer Night." They left behind this little gem, which is just now getting a proper release (on Criterion).
We slummed with cheeky writer Diablo Cody as a Valentine's Day choice and we pretty much got what we deserved. And then we rented "Oppenheimer," and it was nearly as buffoonish. We pulled the plug on both.
"Lisa Frankenstein" is the kind of mid-career film that makes you reflect on whether the author was really any good all along. We have fond memories of "Juno" and are pretty sure it would still hold up. We skipped "Jennifer's Body," whose cheeky snark this movie fails to successfully imitate; were disappointed in "Young Adult"; couldn't get into the TV show "United States of Tara"; and couldn't fully buy into "Tully," though it had its moments.
"Lisa Frankenstein" plays out as if jarred in molasses, with long beats before punch lines and just a sluggish narrative churn. (Give some of the blame to hack director Zelda Williams?) It wasn't clear that it was apparently set in 1989; I just figured Cody was suffocating us with her old hipster music references, such as a teenage girl into Bauhaus with a boyfriend sporting a Violent Femmes T-shirt (under a sport coat, of course). The execution of the story of a misunderstood teenager who reads books in a cemetery and whose dream boy, a long dead young man, comes back to life after a lightning strike is laughable but rarely funny. Carla Gugino is cringeworthy trying her hand at comedy as the stereotypical evil stepmother. Liza Soberano comes across as a rookie playing the uber-popular stepsister named Taffy. The lead, Kathryn Newton, is pretty good, at least.
None of it works. It's insulting. It could have been another smart, tongue-in-cheek teen satire, like "Bottoms," but it is the polar opposite. It's not clever; it's just a lousy movie.
Title: LISA FRANKENSTEIN
Running Time: 101 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull: 50 MIN
Portion Watched: 50%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 61 YRS, 2 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 77.3 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Went home and watched another movie.
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 48-1
Then there is "Oppenheimer," a melodramatic wank that barely rises above the level of your average soap opera. It's an opportunity to single out Christopher Nolan, too, to rethink why we thought the pre-Batman auteur was a great writer-director. (We should watch "Memento" again soon.)
This seems like an interesting story, and I bet the book (American Prometheus) is a good read, but what's on screen is a mess, spending much of its opening scenes repeatedly displaying star bursts, nuclear reactions, and glass shattering in order to replicate the fractured mind of a young genius. It jumps around in time, using the device of a catatonic older Robert J. Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy laying it on thick) reciting his biography to some security commission, while parallel scenes (in black and white, for some reason) star a gaunt Robert Downey Jr. as a candidate for Commerce Secretary testifying before a Senate committee about his association years earlier with Oppenheimer.
And that's just the first 20 minutes of this three-hour monsterpiece. Maybe this was an impossible ask of Nolan, who seems overwhelmed by the vast amount of facts and players involved. Even though it feels sluggish, it also feels rushed, as if there is too much history to stuff into the film. The red-scare thread throughout the film is simplistic and repetitive. Oppenheimer and other brainiacs converse in meticulous speeches and never stoop to small talk; even cocktail banter inevitably comes around to quantum physics. I swear, as the wooden dialogue unspools endless exposition, you can hear the clack of Nolan's old-fashioned typewriter spitting out what he thinks are pearls.
Improbable events are concocted to add a modicum of zing to the leaden storytelling. I counted about 5 examples in the first half hour of characters pointing out how brilliant Oppenheimer was, usually involving his ability to speak other languages. I almost bailed out around the 20-minute mark when Oppenheimer's communist lover pauses mid-fuck, walks over to his musty bookshelf, grabs a volume written entirely in sanskrit, turns to a bookmarked page and asks Oppenheimer to interpret a random passage, and you'll never guess what the line is: "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds." What a perfect coincidence!
The film's sound design is also frustrating. Ambient noise drowns out dialogue. Characters whisper for no reason (for example, multiple times when two people are out in the middle of nowhere in rural New Mexico, like no one would ever do). Murphy is the biggest offender. Hamming it up as the troubled guru behind the atomic bomb, he rasps ominously like a depressed Batman villain or perhaps Nick Cave giving a spoken-word performance.
The supporting cast squirms in no-win situations. Downey looks the part but his tone is off. Emily Blunt goes from 0 to 60 as the cliched, betrayed drunk wife. Florence Pugh sits around naked as the obsessive communist lover, a cheap distraction from the nerdfest. The last straw was Matt Damon pretending to be a hard-ass general overseeing the Manhattan Project; back in the day, a performance this hilarious would be found usually in a Second City TV spoof called Bad Acting in Hollywood.
This whole concept and production is everything that is wrong with Hollywood as a cultural cog of capitalism. This is a dud of historic proportions.
Title: OPPENHEIMER
Running Time: 180 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull: 50 MIN
Portion Watched: 28%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 61 YRS, 2 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 77.3 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Read a book about political organizing.
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 16-1
BONUS TRACK The needle drops in "Lisa Frankenstein" are clunky and distracting, and some good songs are put in danger of getting hated merely by association. Let's rehabilitate one, "Strange" by Galaxie 500:
THE GREATEST NIGHT IN POP (B-minus) - Anyone over 40 is likely to find something to like in this tick-tock about the making of the "We Are the World" charity single, in which Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones assembled a who's who of mid-'80s superstars together in a recording studio for one long night devoted to one sappy song.
It's a mildly interesting reminiscence of a time nearly 40 years ago when the culture was more bunched around familiar faces and names from the worlds of rock, pop and R&B. Richie hogs the limelight with his stories, and he is joined by Bruce Springsteen, Smokey Robinson, Cyndi Lauper, Dionne Warwick and a particularly humble Huey Lewis. We also hear from a few tech people who were crucial to the recording and who tell some of the liveliest stories. (My favorite is the one who looked around at the end of the long night wondering when he'd get paid only to be told that everyone was working for free. Charity, you know.) There's a bit of fun to be had when glimpsing some flash-in-the-pan talent. (Remember Kim Carnes?)
Many of Richie's stories seem embellished, especially the allegedly hectic nature of writing the song at the last minute, which also involved Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. There is a fun side story of whether Prince was going to show up or not (and how Sheila E felt like she was treated as bait). The song was recorded into the wee hours of the morning after the most of the stars had attended the previous evening's American Music Awards (hosted by Richie). Too much of the film seems like generic build-up, involving the recording of the group parts. Things don't pick up until the second half. In one scene it's fun to watch a bevy of superstars crowd around a piano and start to try out their solo parts, as if they're rehearsing a high school musical. Lewis, Lauper and others recall how nervous they were to deliver their one big line each and how drunk Al Jarreau got during the session. We cringe watching an uncomfortable Bob Dylan (his drugs have either kicked in or run out) having no clue, it seems, how to deliver his solo lines but then finally (finally) nailing it (or thereabouts), with the help of Wonder.
It might be tough for most people to get excited about that era again, especially a night devoted to such a generic song. You get the feeling that some of the juiciest scenes might have ended up on the cutting-room floor, so as not to offend the likes of Billy Joel, Tina Turner or Willie Nelson, or one of the dozens of others who got roped into a long, trying night amid a sea of egos.
ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL (2009) (A-minus) - In the holy trilogy of metal movies, we consecrate "This Is Spinal Tap," "Some Kind of Monster" and this indie gem from Sacha Gervasi, a tribute to an early '80s phenom, a band that had a moment before the Metallica surge and dwindled into obscurity back in its hometown of Toronto. This documentary tells the story of two childhood pals, frontman Steve "Lips" Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner, now north of 50, working dead-end jobs but still clinging to the dream of superstardom.
Gervasi, their former roadie, returns in 2006 with a camera to follow Kudlow and Reiner everywhere they go, creating a portrait of two longtime pals near the end of their tether, with Reiner more resigned to an unhappy fate but Kudlow refusing to believe that their career is finished. They muddle through a slapdash tour of Europe, missing trains and hitting rock bottom when they show up two hours late to a gig in Prague such that Kudlow has to physically threaten the owner to pay them after they perform. They toss a hail mary to a former producer who agrees to record a comeback album in the English countryside, but that turns into a catastrophe when Reiner threatens to pull the plug and they can't find a record label to distribute the CD.
The nods to "Spinal Tap" involve more than just a similar vibe -- they playfully echo the "Hello, Cleveland" line and make a pilgrimage to Stonehenge. Their wives and families are supportive (Kudlow's sister foots the bill for the recording), and Kudlow's Muppet-like good cheer is endlessly appealing. Gervasi manages to humanize the men without mocking them or their art. The songs -- including the foundational "Metal on Metal" -- are generic, but it's fun to watch these guys give it their all in front of middle-age fans who never outgrew their own head-banging fandom. Talking heads including Lars Ulrich, Lemmy and Slash bookend the film, offering respect to these two diehards who never allowed mediocrity to defeat them.
THE ORDER OF MYTHS (2008) (B) - This documentary examines the queasy detente of segregation beneath the surface of the annual Mardi Gras celebration in Mobile, Ala. It can be fascinating in its granular detail at times, but it sometimes comes off as merely quirky and inconsequential.
Filmmaker Margaret Brown would go on to make documentaries about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and, more recently, about the Clotilde, the last African slave ship to reach U.S. shores, an incident that gets name-checked here, too. She obtains VIP access to both main organizations that crowns kings and queens of Mardi Gras each year -- one run by the white community and the other by the black community.
Everyone claims that this is the natural order of things and that no one is offended by this 21st century remnant of a more venal segregated past. Toward the end of the film, we'll watch the black couple pop in at the white gala (and mostly get ignored), and then the white couple will pay back the courtesy the following night, looking quite awkward the whole time.
Brown's deep dive into an unusual, quaint ritual has a cult-film feel to it; her devotion to the subject is admirable. But, racial politics aside, her painstaking examination of a subculture comes off a bit too esoteric to land solidly.
BONUS TRACK
Anvil's signature tune was "Metal on Metal." Kudlow often performed in a S&M harness and like to use a dildo as a slide for his guitar. It was the '80s.
THEY CALLED HIM MOSTLY HARMLESS (C+) - This HBO Max true-crime documentary might have made a pretty good 20-minute story on "60 Minutes" or "Dateline NBC." But padded out to more than an hour and a half, it becomes the tedious story of the crowd-sourced hunt for a mysterious hiker found dead on the Appalachian Trail back in 2018.
The most annoying aspect is the repetitive arty B-roll shots, mostly re-creations of internet nerds typing on their keyboards with their chubby fingers, or of overhead drone shots looking down past the tops of trees to hikers retracing steps from years ago. The film also takes needless detours. At one point, the group is convinced that a cancer-sufferer's blog from that time is that of the missing hiker, known to most as Mostly Harmless. But that wasn't him; the cancer guy is still very much alive and totally someone else. Why bother with such distractions?
The filmmakers drag out the mystery to an interminable degree. I was ready to either bail out or fast forward to the end, but I was patient. I had a strong hunch that the reveal would be anti-climactic. (The most logical theories posited at the beginning of the documentary are either that Mostly Harmless was ill or was on the run from the law.) I was not rewarded for my generous devotion of precious time.
THE END OF THE TOUR (C) - Boring doesn't begin to describe this two-man acting exercise between miscast and mismatched actors reliving the time back in the 1990s when a Rolling Stone reporter spent days with author David Foster Wallace during the initial craze over Wallace's notorious novel "Infinite Jest."
Two talented actors are miscast and wildly mismatched. Jason Segel has stoner eyes and the patented bandanna to replicate Wallace's look, and he interprets the author as a mild-mannered, almost Jesus-like broken soul. Jesse Eisenberg plays dress-up as the nerdy reporter. Emo director James Ponsoldt ("The Spectacular Now") thought it would be a good idea to have Eisenberg chain-smoke and snack throughout the movie, someone's idea of humanizing him as a regular working joe, perhaps. I'd bet a crisp 20-dollar bill that Eisenberg has never been a regular smoker in his life. The attempt at millennial Method acting is quite distracting. The two actors occasionally look almost surprised to realize they're actually in the same movie together.
Put these two misguided duds together and watch them drone on about nothing interesting for an hour and 45 minutes. We know from the beginning of the movie that Wallace has gone on to take his own life, and the script (from two writers with scant resumes) renders this entirely in melancholy flashback. The tone is off right from the start, and it never gets interesting.
BONUS TRACK
"The End of the Tour" is the only film in the past 11 years that I previously watched but didn't review. It was a simple oversight. My partner rented it this time, and after 20 minutes I half-watched it, and I remembered why it had such little impact on me. And, for the record, I once made it about 150 pages into Wallace's tome, "Infinite Jest." Probably about average among all human attempts.
