What's Up? Docs.

Quick hits on three documentaries:

GIRL MODEL (B+) - I was enamored throughout with the inventive directing and lush cinematography by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, who spin a smart quasi-expose of the modeling pipeline of girls as young as 13 being shuttled from Siberia to Tokyo. Redmon and Sabin don't shy away from their subject -- the alluring flesh of young women -- but they don't exploit it. An early tracking shot, a point-of-view traipse through a queue of scantily clad teens is more loving than lurid. The real revelation is the extended face time with one modeling agency's talent scout, former model Ashley Arbaugh; 15 years in the business, she provides the bookend to this cautionary tale through candid interviews and archival footage from her video diaries. While the storytelling is strong and this is a solid documentary, I was repeatedly wowed by the camerawork of Redmon and Sabin (for example, shots of Nadya and her mom in their Russian banya or of Ashley during her endless train ride through the snowy countryside), so much so that I want to explore some of the other half-dozen titles on their resume and I look forward to their next projects.

Available at PBS.org via "P.O.V."

PHILIP ROTH: UNMASKED (B) - This strictly by-the-numbers profile of the great American writer on his 80th birthday is simple but effective. It features extended interviews with Roth, who essentially relates his life story and gives selected readings. This is a fascinating examination of the writing process and of creativity in general. ("Shame isn't for writers. You have to be shameless. You can't worry about being decorous.") The uninspired production is essentially a parade of talking heads, but if you have the patience (in this day and age) for stories well told, without quick cuts or screeching commentators, you'll find a deeply satisfying roundtable about life, both intellectual and physical. It places Roth neatly in the cultural arc of the past half century and ends with a touching rumination on suffering and death.

Available at PBS.org via "American Masters."

BUCK (B-minus) - A lethargic, sepia-toned hagiography of Buck Brannaman, a celebrated horse whisperer. (He consulted on the movie starring Robert Redford, who joins the parade of folks gushing about Brannaman's magic.) If you don't love horses and cowboys, take a pass. (I can see why this had a long run in Santa Fe.) Lush cinematography sometimes suffocates extended scenes of Brannaman exhibiting his amazing mastery of horses. But what he does comes off as essentially a parlor trick, and once you've seen it a few times (and guzzled his homespun wisdom), it starts to feel like shtick, and you don't need to spend 90 minutes marveling at either him or the bucolic splendor of his surroundings.

One Liner
"There is no punishment too extreme for the crazy bastard who came up with the idea of fidelity."  
- Philip Roth in "Sabbath's Theater."

Don't Call It a Comeback

Two guys trying to figure stuff out:

CALIFORNIA SOLO (B+) - This is a touching, sad tale of a would-be rocker approaching middle age, adrift in an adopted country where he struggles with his memories and the Big Concept of death. Filmmaker Marshall Lewy wrote this expressly for actor Robert Carlyle, who himself has been a bit at sea at times since his breakthrough role in "Trainspotting" 17 years ago. The result is a comfortable fit, a satisfying drama about Lachlan MacAldonich, a Scotsman wrestling with his dark past in sunny California.

This movie plays like a cross between "Californication" and "Greenberg" with a key difference -- here there are, thankfully, no 20-something women finding the scruffy 40-something loser irresistible. There is, however, 20-something-ish Beau, played perfectly by relative newcomer Alexia Rasmussen, who is bored with her boyfriend ("That '70s Show's" Danny Masterson in a neat turn as a fanboy slacker) and seeks out Lachlan's company. But when Beau and Lachlan do end up headed toward the same bed, it's just to platonically sleep off a night of drinking.

And grizzled Lachlan does like his alcohol. Back in the '90s, he was in a Britpop band with his brother, who was the star and frontman. But the band disintegrated after a tragedy that stranded Lachlan in Southern California and continues to haunt him. Having achieved green-card status through stasis, he now spends his days working on a farm and helping run a farmers market and his evenings in a darkened room hosting a podcast centered on discussions of the deaths of famous rock stars, like Marc Bolan and Janis Joplin.  Then a DWI arrest threatens his immigration status. Throughout, Lewy teeters on the edge of the cliched pitiful-drunk story but manages to never topple over.

Carlyle is ably supported by sharp turns from Rasmussen as well as soap star A Martinez as Lachlan's frustrated boss. The always-welcome Kathleen Wilhoite (Luke's sister on "Gilmore Girls") provides the film's fulcrum as Lachlan's exasperated ex-wife, an asterisk from the rock-star days who raises their teen daughter and now might come in handy in helping resolve his immigration issue. And a particularly sharp scene between Carlyle and Michael Des Barres, in a magnificent cameo as the band's former manager, is itself worth the price of admission.

In addition, the soundtrack is solid -- from the opening rave-up "All Over Again" by Jay Reatard to a pivotal scene's track, "Could You Stand to Know" by Violens.

It all leads to a rather bittersweet ending that is slightly too neat but ambivalent enough to make the whole exercise well worth it.

THE BIG PICTURE (B-minus) - What would it be like to be blessed with a fresh start? It might not be all you'd wished for. For one thing, no matter how light you travel, you've still got a lifetime's worth of baggage to carry with you.

In this French thriller, Paul is a lawyer in an unhappy marriage, with two lovely little boys, a neat house and a nanny. His wife is cheating on him, however, with a photographer who mocks Paul for giving up his own dream of photography and selling out as a bourgeois attorney. When Paul's wife announces she wants a divorce, an unfortunate accident occurs, and Paul grabs a fistful of euros from the office safe and flees to the Adriatic coast of Croatia.

Will he rediscover his passion for photography? Is that even possible? To reveal any more of the plot would ruin the enjoyment of the film's subtle twists and turns. We get some truly gripping scenes, but too often this all plays out rather glumly. Romain Duris ("The Beat That My Heart Skipped") plays Paul in a dull minor key, and we never quite connect with the character. It's all about as morose as the Beck song that plays over the opening credits.


Bonus Track
"Don't call it a comeback!"

New to the Queue

Here are the latest new releases that will rest, like sleeper cells, in my rental queue until they make it to a local theater or to DVD:

The Serbian teen drama "Clip."

"My Brother the Devil," the coming-of-age story of Arab brothers in East London.

The '60s girl-group saga "The Sapphires," which played at the Santa Fe Film Festival in December. (Can I handle a corny movie with Chris O'Dowd?)

Finally, "Stoker" has made its way to Albuquerque, and I may catch it if it lasts more than a week.

. . . So You Don't Have To: "Bachelorette"

BACHELORETTE (B-minus)

Thank goodness for Kirsten Dunst; I could watch just about anything with Kirsten Dunst. In the raunchy female answer song to "The Hangover" etal., Dunst, like her character, takes a complete clusterfuck and salvages something tolerable out of it.

Dunst is Regan, the alpha female among three high school pals who gather in New York to stand up at the wedding of the fat girl they used to call Pigface behind her back, but who now is the first to get married, and to a handsome guy (with a job), to boot. Each is a two-dimensional character -- one has a history of eating disorders, one is a substance-abusing slut, and the other is a dimwit with a great rack. While mocking poor Becky behind her back, they rip her wedding dress and proceed to spend the night before the wedding soiling it in creative ways while they attempt to get it into a pair of safe hands that can repair it.

The script, like the gals, is a hot mess. Writer/director Leslye Headland (adapting her play) patches it all together with idiot-plot devices, observes the space-time continuum when she feels like it, and throws out pathetic '80s and '90s pop culture references that are a 40-something's idea of insider hip. (A character does a minor imitation of Tom Hanks on "SNL" (!) and then has to tell us that he just did an imitation of Tom Hanks on "SNL.") For some reason, Headland flaunts her knowledge of Harry Truman. Believe it or not, she serves up a stereotypical uber-efficient Asian assistant. And everyone goes to one of those strip clubs where all the women keep their tops on and chat cheekily with the customers. But as bawdy as these gals get, it seems that their hearts just aren't in it. Frankly, they can't hold Will Ferrell's jock (he signed on here as a producer with pal Adam McKay).

"Bachelorette" does have its moments. Dunst is at her Type-A best, especially down the stretch. Isla Fisher, as the dumb one, is consistently funny and occasionally hilarious (like when she insists that the death of Lady Di, which they all bonded over, happened four years ago).

Lizzy Caplan as Gena still has big beautiful eyes for her teenage boyfriend played by the overexposed Adam Scott (too old for this part; he turns 40 next month and if he combs his hair any farther forward he'll have to eat all his meals through a straw). The couple had a traumatic event that they haven't sorted out 15 or so years later. Caplan and Scott have no chemistry, and his attempts to win her back are uninspired and devoid of true humor. And Caplan plays the foul-mouthed hard-ass here, kicking it off with a painfully unfunny, interminable riff on fellatio directed improbably at her seat-mate on an airplane (as she chugs minis). In fact, I lost count of how many times Caplan's character either threatened or promised to blow someone. Hardy-har.

That's really the problem here. It's a lot of talk and little action. We've seen this type of movie ad nauseam (even the female version: "Bridesmaids"), and just about every working part of this film has been done funnier and raunchier before.

One-Liners

Quick hits on some recent rentals:

DIANA VREELAND: THE EYE HAS TO TRAVEL (C+) - You need a tolerance for fashion and vacuity to sit still for this 86-minute documentary about the 20th century's foremost fashionista. It's fun to glimpse classic clips of Lauren Bacall and Twiggy and Marisa Berenson and the London rock stars of the swinging '60s. This is a fawning film, directed by Vreeland's granddaughter-in-law and starring a string of admirers. Like Vreeland's output at Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, it's a pleasant trifle.

SNOWMAN'S LAND (B) - This is an above-average gangster flick from Germany. Walter (Jurgen Ribmann), a professional killer, has botched a hit and is encouraged to disappear for a while. A colleague pawns off a job to Walter, that of protecting a mob boss hiding out at a mansion tucked into the mountainous woods. He's joined by a goofy co-hort, Micky (Thomas Wodianka), whiling away the time waiting for the boss to return and being entertained by the coked-up, orgy-loving moll who comes and goes. When a serious mistake happens, Walter and Micky must figure out a way to survive and escape. Ribmann and Wodianka look and act like a classic comedy team; I'm thinkingTennessee Tuxedo and Chumley. Actually Ribmann (Chumley) looks like Philip Seymour Hoffman starring in "Bob Stinson: The Final Days"; Micky could be James Farentino co-starring as Perry Farrell. It all plays out in a compact 95 minutes. There is blood and pulp, and a good share of old-fashioned mob torture. It won't make you renounce "Reservoir Dogs," but it works.

Speaking of one liners:
From a self-important 20-year-old in David Chase's '60s time capsule "Not Fade Away," when told that music is supposed to keep you young: "Rock ’n’ roll is an art form! Does Dostoevsky keep you young?"

(review coming soon)

Old Wave

I can't say I'm a big fan of Orson Welles. Of course, "Citizen Kane" is one of the great achievements of cinema and I love it every time I see it. Then again, I was bored during "The Magnificent Ambersons." And while there is a lot to like about THE STRANGER (1946), Welles' Nazi-hunting noir that is often listed among his best, it ain't great. As a director, he's technically brilliant, but his features can be condescending and emotionally shallow.

The Guild Cinema's annual summer film-noir festival has made me a grudging fan of the genre. But I wear a different cap when I take in noir; I have to work harder to suspend reality. I don't like to suspend reality. I want to be entertained by a believable story. That's why I don't spend a lot of time on Golden Age or pioneering cinema; things didn't really get interesting until Brando showed up (or Robert Mitchum, if you prefer) and the French and American New Waves kicked in. I don't need sweetness and light, CGI and thrills; give me harrowing Romanian abortion dramas; uncomfortable family comedies; modern-day Shakespearean/Sopranoan personal tragedies; French coming-of-age heartbreakers; modern American indie slices of life.

Noir does get a pass, but those films rarely play in the same league as the great films. And by those rules, "The Stranger" can't hold a candle to "Citizen Kane." I won't ruin "The Stranger" here; but suffice it to say that a key plot device that sets up the climax of the film is so ludicrous that the subsequent denouement just can't be taken seriously as high art. It's shtick, and it's a cheap way to set up a fantastic feat of camera work.

Up to that point, "The Stranger" is a serviceable simmering postwar page-turner. Welles stars (there's his first problem) as Charles Rankin, a professor with a secret who gets a visit from the former comrade of a Nazi war criminal on the day of Rankin's wedding to rich, lovely Mary Longstreet (an OK Loretta Young). Nazi hunter Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) is on that comrade's trail and follows along to the uber-American town of Harper, Conn., where he keeps an eye on Rankin.

As noted above, Welles is not a strong leading man here, and he and Young have weak chemistry, despite a few passionate kisses that must have caused quite the blushing among viewers during its original run. Robinson blows everyone away with a sharp, sarcastic turn as Wilson. He and Billy House, who plays the pharmacy owner and checkers champ Mr. Potter, especially sparkle in their moments of shared repartee.

This movie must have felt fresh and exciting in 1946. (It was one of Welles' biggest hits, perhaps because of the theme and the timing of the movie's release, and the goodwill earned from "Kane" and "Ambersons.") Folks who study film can better discuss the expert staging and camera work, but Welles creates a flow and sense of real-life movement by breaking from traditional sets and blocking, much like modern "walking and talking" TV shows now do. Much of the action intersects in the town pharmacy, and Welles captures the idiosyncrasies of small-town life well. I'm guessing he was ahead of his time with his keen eye in calling out a quaint cultural development like the rise of the self-serve store.

In that sense, I tend to squirrel Welles away in a cubbyhole with Quentin Tarantino. That may be an odd pairing, but both emerged early on with groundbreaking, rules-defying epics that signaled a new language of film; but they had difficulty recapturing that magic in subsequent efforts and instead indulged their own eccentricities. "The Stranger" is a solid effort by Welles.  It is excellent second-class cinema.

GRADE: B

A shout-out to the new Albuquerque Film Club, which is hosting monthly screenings of classics (and follow-up discussion sessions) at the Guild Cinema.

New to the Queue

Recent releases that caught my eye:

Michel Gondry's take on New York teens commuting from school, "The We and the I."

Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's long-awaited follow-up to "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," "Beyond the Hills."
 
The harrowing fishing documentary "Leviathan," which played at the Santa Fe Film Festival in December.

"Downeast," a documentary about downsizing in the Maine fishing industry. 

"War Witch," a drama about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, seen through the eyes of children. (Coming to the Guild Cinema in April.)

The teen tone poem "Pavilion."

The relationship drama "Molly's Theory of Relativity."

The Brooklyn tale "Welcome to Pine Hill."

"Bitter Buddha," a profile of comedian Eddie Pepitone.

ABQ Confidential: Digging (up) Dad

DECONSTRUCTING DAD: THE MUSIC, MACHINES, AND MYSTERY OF RAYMOND SCOTT (B-minus) - Playing tonight and Sunday at 8 p.m. at the Guild Cinema.

This one was difficult to grade. It's a fascinating documentary that is definitely worth seeing. But technically, it's a mess. Here, Stanley Warnow (rhymes with Stanley Karnow) delves into the life of his father, jazz pioneer Raymond Scott.

The first third of the film (the "Music") is a trip, as we are introduced to Scott not only through old clips and recordings but through modern musicians who demonstrate the complexities and the beauty of Scott's compositions. It plays like a Music Theory course (Scott is described as a perfectionist and a genius as a producer), and it's jaunty and fun. Scott's music was licensed by the folks creating the Looney Tunes shorts, and he is perhaps best known for "Powerhouse," which became a cartoon soundtrack classic:

He went on to achieve more than modest fame and success as bandleader for the early TV smash "Your Hit Parade." (His brother had led the band for the radio version of the show but died right before the transition to TV.)


The final third of the film (the "Machines") draws us in to the technical noodlings of Scott, whose magnum opus of a contraption was the Electronium, a crude forerunner to the synthesizer. Scott seemed to never complete any of his inventions, but he did manage to create music with them (and have the machines themselves occasionally generate their own melodies), serving as a sort-of godfather to the genre of Space Age Bachelor Pad music.

Here's a geek's introduction to the Electronium:

The machine now belongs to Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo, "Pee-Wee's Playhouse"), who rescued it from a weathered garage.

The problem with this production is Warnow's weakness as a filmmaker -- in a bit of dramatic irony, he's rather technically inept, shooting John Williams and Mothersbaugh in horrid lighting, for instance -- and his insistence on making the story about him and his mostly absentee father. There is just no dramatic tension created, and Warnow uses the middle third of the film (the "Mystery") to actually turn the camera on himself (and his own son at one point) in a vain attempt to plumb some emotional depths. But he comes up empty. (For an expert way to make a documentary about your parents, check out "51 Birch Street.") The combination of cheap filmmaking and indulgent storytelling (Warnow's mother and sister also chew up a lot of screen time) seriously threaten to derail the whole documentary.

But the music and the machines do win out in the end. Scott's is a compelling story of a musician, composer and inventor who was ahead of his time and under-appreciated.

Bonus Track
Raymond Scott and his Quintet performing "Twilight in Turkey" from "Ali Baba Goes to Town":

Kids today! (Wait, what year is it?)

From the DVD files, two takes on teens. And we're not grading on a curve.

Finally, a Christian film with nuance and smarts, worthy of serious consideration. Thank God. 

"THE WISE KIDS" (A-minus) is a sweet, heart-swelling drama centering around three teens in Charleston, S.C., on the brink of adulthood, during the spring and summer before college, all wrestling with their faith to various degrees. Brea is the preacher's daughter who is mired in doubt as she starts to think independently and question the teachings of the church and her parents. Laura, who can feel Brea's friendship slipping away, doubles down on Jesus, exploding in occasional outbursts of fundamentalism and refusing to yield on the literal word of God.  Tim is in the middle, loyal to his Christian faith but not ignoring his burgeoning homosexuality.

Writer/director Stephen Cone anchors the story as a church leader and music/theater director questioning his own sexuality. Elizabeth is his wife, suffering with heartache and longing; it's hard to tell if she's crushing on the new youth-minister candidate or just his happy marriage. If that all sounds melodramatic, it very well could have been. But Cone strikes the perfect tone throughout, not afraid, for instance, to let a glance take the place of dialogue. He has an effortless way of conveying awkwardness.

And his no-name cast is pitch-perfect throughout. Molly Kunz as Brea is the big bat in this lineup, and she carries the story while remaining restrained and refined. Tyler Ross as Tim is sweet but substantial, though Ross's Michael Cera shtick could get old if he gets typecast as "the budding gay filmmaker" (see his turn in the wonderfully quirky "Nate and Margaret"). Allison Torem is just the right kind of manic as Laura, who is kind of the wild card here. At two different junctures she feels compelled to remind others that just because she takes an Originalist approach to the Bible doesn't mean she's stupid; it comes off as a fascinating echo rather than redundancy or filler. And Sadiah Rifai is a revelation as Elizabeth; Cone methodically peels back the layers of Rifai's physical beauty while simultaneously unpacking the depths of her character, scene by scene.

The whole film is beautifully layered. While the story is steeped in the tension between Christianity and sexuality, and two of the main characters struggle with coming out, no one utters the word "gay" until the final reel (if I'm not mistaken). And that typifies Cone's confident, masterful touch as both a screenwriter and director. He gets everything just right.

 ***

On the other end of the grading scale, we're reminded that the transition from tween to teen sometimes veers off into twee.

The cartoonish memoir "THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER" (D+) is a mawkish mix-tape masquerading as a movie. Writer/director (and source material author) Stephen Chbosky aims for something in the general direction of John Hughes and Augusten Burroughs with this autobiographical tale of his high school days and falls embarrassingly short.

Our hero, Charlie, is a little cipher whose childhood trauma is revealed slowly in clunky flashbacks (trapping the brilliant Melanie Lynskey in a thankless role). The bookish bore is surrounded by the Breakfast Club's understudies, each one a cardboard cut-out that's about as fresh as Dobie Gillis. Freshman Charlie pines for the cute, damaged Sam, who welcomes him into her clique of fellow seniors. Will clueless Charlie make his move before Sam goes off to Penn State? Will they all defeat their adolescent demons? Will Sam even get accepted into Penn State?? Oh, boy, won't this all make a swell novel someday!

The movie stumbles out of the gate by throwing wildly different eras of music at us, and we are taken out of the film while we try to figure out just exactly which era we're supposed to be in. In one scene our precocious teens are declaring "Come On, Eileen" to be "cool" when played at a dance (the gee-whiz kind you'd expect to be headlined by the Archies), and in the very next scene Cracker's "Low" pulses at a party while innocent Charlie is tricked into getting high for the first time (revealing the brooding nerd to be a veritable Jerry Seinfeld -- those rascals!). Are we in 1982? 1993? When exactly was the heyday of mix tapes, cordless phones and goth girls? Sam's favorite song is by the Cocteau Twins, but Charlie gives her a Beatles 45 as a gift. And once we finally agree that what we're watching takes place in the early '90s, just so we can get on with things already, here come the '70s, perversely fetishized throughout. Chbosky threatens to ruin David Bowie's "Heroes" the same way "Moulin Rouge" murdered "Your Song." (By the way, Stephen, you're way late to the "Heroes" party now, and you were in 1993 -- when you were 23.) And is there really any insight or emotion left to wring out of "Rocky Horror" fandom? (Not just one scene begging to be edited here but two.)

In the end, this is little more than Chbosky's scattered aging-hipster soundtrack full of painfully obvious alt-classic tracks from the likes of the Smiths and Sonic Youth, used as a device to string together moments of melodrama.

And the cast is directionless. Paul Rudd is cloying as Mr. Anderson, the English teacher who feeds classic novels to Charlie because, darn it, he just knows that the kid will one day be the novelist that good ol' Mr. Anderson never will be. This is my first experience with the manic pixie dream girl Emma Watson, and she gives it the old high school try as Sam, but she and fellow 20-something Logan Lerman, playing Charlie, show the depth and nuance of a pair of Muppet Babies.

This isn't so much a period film set in the early '90s (we're pretty sure), as it is a parody of a cheap TV drama made in the early '90s. Would you believe they actually still greenlight movies in the 2010s in which a student does his impression of the shop teacher in front of the class ... only to have the teacher walk in at that very moment! Or a movie where a character, talking on the phone with that crazy chatterbox friend, lays the receiver down mid-conversation, walks away and returns later only to find her still gabbing away. Or a movie that places an interminable Christmas scene at the pivotal halfway point, one in which the hipster kids give each other just the right secret-Santa gifts, such as a vintage typewriter or a suit and tie ... that just happens to fit perfectly.  Or a movie where the jocks trip the nerds, sparking a fistfight in an inexplicably unsupervised cafeteria and revealing one character's superhero-like strength. (And, of course, one of the football stars is a closeted homophobic gay blockhead.)

Toward the climax, one of the kids actually compares the narrative in progress to an "ABC Afterschool Special." (You, sir, are no Lance Kerwin.)

And what's the lesson we've learned, boys and girls? Just because you can write a novel -- and Chbosky's book could very well be brilliant -- it doesn't mean you can write and direct a movie. During that endless Christmas scene, Sam urges Charlie: "Write about us." I'll bet the real Sam wishes she could take those words back.

R.I.P.

Venezuela's leader, Hugo Chavez, died today at age 58.

One of my favorite Santa Fe Film Festival memories is of cramming into a makeshift theater at the Center for Contemporary Arts as part of an energized sold-out crowd to watch "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," the 2003 documentary about the failed coup attempt against the Chavez regime in 2002.

The doc also goes by the title "Chavez: Inside the Coup."


It's available online at the link above or in various versions on YouTube, such as this one:

First Failure

FIRST WINTER (C)

This indie curiosity is a perplexing, lightweight film that we will file under survivalist porn. A bunch of horny hippie yoga enthusiasts from Brooklyn gather in a remote farmhouse during winter, and all is utopian, communal bliss -- an urban hipster's steam-punk fantasy -- until some unspecified apocalyptic event causes a blackout. The cult-like yogi who leads the group is a stereotypical sexual predator. The women just can't resist hopping (often two at a time) into bed with him. What gal can resist the Grizzly Adams look; his ridiculous mustache and beard would constitute a full head of hair on top of any adult head.

As the blackout endures and the transistor radio's intermittent reports grow more ominous, the guru and his first lieutenant spot a huge billow of smoke on the horizon. A subset of the group is sent out as a posse to round up provisions. They never return. Food supplies dwindle and the dinner circle grows grumpy and anxious. The first lieutenant self-medicates by snorting heroin. The radio transmission dissolves into constant static. The terror peaks with the grotesque death of a member victimized by tainted canned fruit.

First-time director Benjamin Dickinson has a messy failure on his hands, but he shows incredible promise. His hand-held camera captures some lovely images, and he develops an appealing intimacy with his characters, as undistinguished as this cast of actors is. Some brief scenes border on the profound. A hare krishna musical jam session turns into the soundtrack for a sped-up sex scene (played as cute TV farce) and ends with a memorable blurred shot of our heroin hero sedated by a good snort. Toward the climax, Dickinson shoots the dinner circle by zooming close on the pot and spoon serving up exactly two scoops of rice and beans, dish by dish, and as the camera painstakingly tracks back and forth we see the bowls being emptied by the ravenous diners.

But the beauty is undercut by clunky touches: I stopped counting how often I had to watch a character pee; close-up shots of food preparation grow tiresome; oddly, animals are virtually non-existent out in the wilderness, until, that is, they conveniently show up merely to serve the clunky plot; a crying jag is straight out of Bad Acting 101; a love story never comes together with any dramatic force.

In the end, a thaw finally does come, and the ending is elegantly rendered; but it makes the 90 minutes leading up to that coda feel so inconsequential that it seems as if it was all slapped together as filler to tack onto the beginning of an amazing six-minute short film. Et voila, a feature film.

Dickinson has mood and style; next time he needs to add a story that sticks to the ribs and more interesting characters. I eagerly await his next film. Namaste.

Streaming Life

FANNY, ANNIE & DANNY (B+) - This spiraling drama of a dysfunctional family has an amateurish gloss to it, which actually works in its favor, because the acting and the pacing are particularly refreshing. Fanny is slow and lives in a group home; Annie's an insecure dental hygienist; and Danny's a wannabe big-shot agent. Fanny loses her job; Annie is half-heartedly planning a wedding with her unemployed stoner boyfriend; Danny is called out by the mother of one of the members of the band he's representing and suddenly needs cash quick. Add two crazy parents expecting their beloved offspring for Christmas dinner (a week before Christmas, because Mom can't handle the actual day itself), and we can predict that things probably won't end well, especially for the PTSD Vietnam vet dad. The pot-head is the only sensible, sensitive one in the bunch.

Colette Keen is off the charts as the hectoring mom who has rules dictating every facet of others' behavior and whose smoker's rasp makes the Little Rascals' Froggy sound like Minnie Ripperton. The others expertly bob and weave around her little tornado. Writer/director Chris Brown doesn't waste a line or a shot as he constructs a smart, compact 82-minute package. The crescendo involving a painfully awkward family singalong of old-fashioned Christmas/religious tunes (penned by Brown in a macabre mood) around the living-room organ is chilling; it's a distant, indie/lo-fi third cousin twice-removed to the baptism scene in "The Godfather," without the bloodshed.

At times this is the filmmaking equivalent of Sonic Youth playing with creatively out-of-tune guitars. It's appealingly discomfiting. It's a simple family tragedy in a minor key. And days later, it might be nagging at you like your mom did.

BESTIAIRE (C+) - This series of long takes in which we gaze at animals in a Quebec safari park will challenge even the most tedium-tolerant. It would be interesting to re-watch this almost entirely wordless documentary while stoned to see if it would get a higher grade. It would only be fair; many of the animals stare at the camera or off into the distance as if vibing off of a classic high. But filmmaker Denis Cote doesn't just engage the various beasts in staring contests; sometimes the camera lingers on a human who is gazing at an animal. We begin with a drawing class, students sketching what eventually is revealed to be a stuffed animal; that opening is echoed later by an extended scene observing a taxidermist stuff a duck.

I've seen slow, repetitive movies. "Le Quattro Volte" is one of my favorites of the past decade. But after 10 minutes of this one, I sort-of checked out, for at least a half hour before connecting again with the second half of this slim 72-minute effort. Some beasts just aren't that interesting. The camera angles are inspired at times, with intense close-ups and odd framing. For example, we see some raccoon-like creature, shot from the neck to the waist, eat what looks like a piece of apple, and it's fun to observe the food in one hand disappearing up toward the mouth while the other hand hangs there. (Really, that's about as profound as this gets. This scene, too, gets a human echo as we also watch a young woman eat an apple for about 30 seconds.)

The plot, if you can call it that, kind of involves observing these animals during the off-season, followed by the preparations in getting them ready for the crowds, which eventually arrive, and we're reminded how quirky and beastly we humans can be when we allow the camera to sit for a while and stare at us. It's almost bittersweet when the line of cars starts to snake into the grounds. All makes and models, they enter two by two.



Bonus track: Jeff Tweedy's live bootleg version of Blondie's "Dreaming," because it rhymes with "streaming."