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."