Not Rated

A pair from the X files:

A LIFE IN DIRTY MOVIES (B-minus) -  A portrait of sexploitation legend Joe Sarno, who along with his wife, Peggy, sought immortality as the Bergman of porn in the 1960s and '70s but who faded into obscurity upon the explosion of hardcore, videotape and the internet.

Sarno is a pathetic figure here. His younger wife (she's 70, he's in his late 80s) tends to his physical infirmities, their shaky finances, and his bid to return behind the camera. Her parents were well off and helped finance Sarno's later pictures. The mom, pushing 100, shows up here for an interview, and she still betrays remnants of disappointment at her daughter's choice to wed a pornographer.

Sarno's work was artsy and sophisticated compared with modern skin flicks. Wikipedia sums up his style well: "Sarno's work of the sexploitation period is typified by stark chiaroscuro lighting, long takes and rigorous staging. He was also well known for scenarios centering around issues of psycho-sexual anxiety and sexual identity development." Titles include Cheeverian "Sin in the Suburbs" and "The Swap and How They Make It." (Sarno eventually abandoned his high-brow pretensions and spent the '80s cranking out hardcore films under various pseudonyms.)

The psycho-sexual themes include family issues, bordering on the incestuous. The clips shown here are tasteful while offering a provocative glimpse of a lost era of skeevy underground cinema. The talking heads include film historians, former actors like Annie Sprinkle, admirer John Waters, as well as Sarno's former colleagues, more sad figures who still struggle with a world that changed 40 years ago.

Wiktor Ericsson (the Sarnos had a second home in Bergman's Sweden) is a serviceable director, but this is definitely a no-frills production. He is rescued here by the clips from Sarno's films, which definitely deserve revisiting.

THE TELEPHONE BOOK (1971) (B-minus) -  A curiosity from 1971, this explicit  and scatterbrained offering follows squeaky-voiced Alice (Sarah Kennedy, a Goldie Hawn 2.0 from late-era "Laugh-In") as she hunts down the John Smith who made an obscene call to her.

Alice encounters a series of folks, not just obscene callers, one kinkier than the other. Some mainstream actors participate. Barry Morse (Lt. Gerard from "The Fugitive") plays an aging porn star engaging in an orgy with a half-dozen women (as Andy Warhol regular Ultra Violet looks on with a whip at the ready). William Hickey ("Moonlighting") is a bed-ridden man suffering from chronic priapism. Roger Buell ("The Mothers-In-Law") plays an analyst who gets off on Alice's tales of other lovers. Jill Clayburgh is Alice's phone friend mostly seen in an eye mask.

It all plays like prurient farce. Alice's apartment has soft-core images on the walls, dirty magazines on the floors and a stars-and-stripes bedspread. She frequently frolics in the buff. One man shampoos her hair while she splashes in a bathtub. There is extensive frontal nudity (mostly female) throughout accompanied by raw language. The movie takes a detour in the final act as a man in a pig mask spins an extended psychedelic story, suggesting that Alice is indeed wandering around Wonderland.

This has elements of Russ Meyer, "Kentucky Fried Movie" and Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex." The climax, if you will, is an insane final 10 minutes of mostly animation that would make Terry Gilliam blush.

A Couple of Rounds

I AM ALI (A-minus) - About five years ago I was in Phoenix watching a spring training game. Random. I want to say Dodgers vs. Royals. Late in the game, between innings, a bullpen car ambled along the third base/left field line, another seeming innocuous distraction that ballparks assault fans with. A buzz started. A muffled announcement came over the loudspeakers. Word of mouth confirmed it: Muhammad Ali was in that bullpen car, waving to us. Random. He quickly disappeared, but the excitement of being in the same stadium with the Champ, albeit a distant drive-by, gave me a genuine thrill like no other celebrity could provide.

I seem to never get enough of documentaries about Muhammad Ali. He has towered over my life for as long as I can remember. This quiet little film -- an unabashed love letter to the man -- gave me one more thrill.

TV documentarian Clare Lewins here unspools an incredibly intimate portrait of the boxing legend. This story has been told many times before, treading the same territory, but never as personal as this. As a framing device, Lewins utilizes home movies (film and videotape), as well as cassette tapes of phone calls Ali made, mostly to his children. In particular, we hear him bantering with little Maryum (one of his nine children from multiple marriages and affairs), getting her to recite her ABC's or asking the girl what she thinks God's plan for her is.

Some will find this ridiculous and sentimental. They will be appalled when one talking head describes looking into Ali's eyes and seeing God; another calls him the greatest human to ever walk the earth. This is, indeed, unrepentant hagiography. It's one side of the story. But it's hard to take your eyes off of it. It's easy to get wrapped up in Ali's fascinating world. The tale of his interaction with a boy dying of leukemia is magical.

Ex-wives, a brother and children testify here. So do contemporaries and rivals like George Foreman, Jim Brown, Joe Frazier's son Marvis, and successor Mike Tyson. Oddballs like the singer Tom Jones -- describing a publicity sparring session -- offer entertaining tidbits. Manager and pal Gene Kilroy and legendary trainer Angelo Dundee provide insightful commentary. Lewins drops in extended clips of lesser-known interviews, such as Ali describing to David Frost how he was going to defeat the slow-footed Foreman (whom Ali dubbed "The Mummy").

The culled images seem fleeting, (from his rural training camp to Zaire), but they slowly gel into a bigger picture. They create one version of Muhammad Ali, the man. He was and is a cultural phenomenon, a central figure in the history of the second half of the 20th century. He's known in every corner of the world. With this portrait of a family man, a friend, a spiritual being, we now know him just a little bit better.

TAPIA (C) - This is a 52-minute version of the documentary, available on HBO. It is the story of Johnny Tapia, the five-time boxing champ and troubled soul from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

This is a serviceable overview of Tapia's career, but it wallows in the boxer's origin story -- the murder of his mom when he was a kid, his longtime drug addiction as an adult -- in a way that goes beyond maudlin. A fellow New Mexico native, Eddie Alcazar, helmed the project, and he falls into the trap of glorifying the hard-scrabble New Mexican-ness of one of the state's favorite (yet troubled) sons.

Tapia himself, in the days before his death in 2012, sits for the camera, bloated, in full ring gear. His ramblings have the musk of rationalization throughout. Alcazar uses kid gloves throughout, finding few other voices that would help provide a more rounded portrait. This is a simple primer that hints at a more in-depth documentary to be made someday.

Inadvertent Double Feature: America's Sweetheart

A pair of Anna Kendrick movies on the holiday, from different ends of the cinema spectrum, hipster indie to Disney musical:

HAPPY CHRISTMAS (B-minus) -  An interesting but ultimately pointless exercise in holiday gloom from love-hate director Joe Swanberg.

He assembles three very talented women -- Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey and Lena Dunham -- for some first-rate riffing on romance and marriage. Kendrick plays Jenny, a twenty-something dealing with a breakup who shows up at the Chicago home of her brother Jeff (Swanberg) and his Aussie wife Kelly (Lynskey) and their toddler, immediately stirring up trouble with her erratic behavior and binge drinking.

Dunham is Carson, Jenny's loquacious pal. Early on, they share a drink with Kelly, drawing out of her some ennui and frustration over having given up life as a novelist to have a child. The three women have a few very good scenes together -- including brainstorming the plot of a cheap romance novel -- and their banter features some quality indie improv. Kendrick is fine, as usual, but Swanberg gives her only one note to play (and an annoying Valley Girl patois). Lynskey, much better in 2012's "Hello, I Must Be Going," looks lost most of the time. Dunham again proves she's the nimble comic mind behind "Girls."

The story, however, goes nowhere. Swanberg stretches our patience by repeatedly featuring cutesy scenes with his real-life child -- at the risk of turning this into an unbearable home movie. This had all the ingredients of a quiet gem -- and there are some fine moments to be found in these 82 minutes -- but it ends up being a disappointment.

INTO THE WOODS (C-minus) - If you want to see a good musical (and we're rarely in the mood), find one with memorable music. This fairy-tale cocktail drones too often and never soars like a movie musical should.

Our annual Christmas Day Mainstream Movie gave us two hours of visual delights and a few sharp performances, but as a story -- merging Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella and Rapunzel in a forest setting with a wicked witch -- this Broadway adaptation is a mess.

Ms. Kendrick acquits herself well as Cinderella the Bird Lady, playing coy with a dolt of a prince, a wry turn from Chris Pine. Emily Blunt is surprisingly strong (and in wonderful voice) as the Baker's Wife, seeking to lift the witch's curse so they can have a baby. Newcomer Lilla Crawford holds her own with the adults as Red Riding Hood. Others tend to be distractions: Johnny Depp is silly as the Big Bad Wolf; Christine Baranski is miscast as Cinderella's step-mother; Meryl Streep is out of control as the Witch.

James Lapine adapted his own musical. "Chicago's" Rob Marshall directs. Few of us will be singing or humming these tunes in the coming days. I had a good 10-minute nap halfway through, which helped me survive the spectacle. Those who witnessed the whole thing were not as lucky. 

BONUS TRACK
Swanberg assembled a soundtrack with a retro sound, including this one from Swede Joel Alme:

Funny People

TOP FIVE (B+) -  This is a very funny movie with an unfortunate rom-com middle act, as if Chris Rock had to compromise with the studio and somehow prove his art-film cred.

Rock plays Andre Allen, a mid-career actor who is having trouble reconnecting with his blockbuster comedy roots (he got rich wearing a costume in the "Hammy the Bear" trilogy) and is now ensnared in a reality-TV vortex, in the final days of prep for his wedding to a reality star (Gabrielle Union) on her Bravo show. Meantime, Andre consents to an interview with a free-lancer for the New York Times, Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson).

Unfortunately Dawson's Chelsea comes pre-packaged as the gorgeous single mom who can't find the right guy. (The movie's nadir features her dating a mope and a closet case named Brad who doesn't hide his affinity for being violated.) In fact, the several key plot twists are gimmicky, as if decided by the Committee on Hollywood Tropes. For instance, both Andre and Chelsea are recovering alcoholics; begin the countdown to one of them cracking open a bottle and having a meltdown.

Andre and Chelsea eventually hit it off. (He's wary of her at first, because the Times critic has delivered blistering hit jobs on his movies.) They wander New York City (lovingly filmed, although Rock's version is a quirky paradise where adorable black girls play jump rope on seemingly every corner), and are nimbly chatty and intimate. Suddenly Rock seems to be riffing on Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" trilogy; unfortunately, it's a weak imitation that doesn't have quite the ear of the source material. 

(Some are comparing this to "Annie Hall," but I didn't see that at all, thankfully. If you want a Woody Allen homage -- and a full circle to the "Before" movies -- try Julie Delpy's neurotic "2 Days in New York," in which Rock plays her husband named Mingus.)

One the true gems here is Rock playing off the hilarious J.B. Smoove, who portrays Silk, Andre's body man. The actors' rapport is exquisite, providing genuine depth to childhood friends who are still always there for each other. Smoove kills it in a late scene in which Andre, riding princely in the back seat of his town car, is going through a gift bag from his bachelor party. (Earlier, Tracy Jordan eviscerates the idea of a brother attending any event that results in a gift bag.) As Andre picks through the items, dismissing each one, Silk is there to find his own use for them. Scented candle? "I know a Mexican girl; she a candle bitch." And Silk's affinity for full-figured women leads to a quaint sight gag.

In fact, the true appeal in this movie is the talented cast, which goes quite deep in comedic chops. As a result, this is often laugh-out-loud funny.

Rock's old stand-up pals are here (Whoopi Goldberg, Adam Sandler, Jerry Seinfeld, Brian Regan, and Jim Norton pass through), but he also gives some younger comics a decent amount of screen time (SNL cast members Michael Che, Jay Pharoah and Leslie Jones populate a boisterous pivotal scene brimming with black culture references). Characters come and go as if in a variety show. Cedric the Entertainer is a local greeter/chauffeur with a vulgar penchant for prostitutes. (His delivery of a line about hotel-room coat hangers is perfect; see the punchline to the trailer below.) Kevin Hart riffs as Andre's agent. Just fleeting glimpses of talented supporting actors -- Ben Vereen, Tichina Arnold, Luis Guzman, Allan Havey -- are satisfying.

There are truly sublime moments: the rapper DMX crooning in a prison cell (while providing a bookend to a Charlie Chaplin reference early in the film); Jerry Seinfeld letting his hair down at a bachelor party (and providing a meta punchline, in his patented sing-song delivery, "Do I HAVE to say it?!"); Rock and Seinfeld bantering comfortably with Goldberg and Sandler (whose "Funny People" is a touchstone here) about marriage; an extended-family gathering, with Jordan at the center of it, in which he launches the charming "top five" running gag -- Andre and others constantly spouting a list of their favorite rappers/hip-hoppers. A touching scene, in which Andre returns to a comedy club, features genuinely funny standup material from working comics. (Andre himself tops them all with a groaner of a JFK assassination joke.) That one scene exhibits both Rock's attention to detail and his generosity with the comedy community, and it pays off as a key plot device, as well.

It is in scenes like that where Rock is in command, and his talents meld as a joke machine and a filmmaker. It is a shame that he is too often hampered by a conventional narrative. If you can survive the trite and quaint, you'll be rewarded with a comedy gift bag.

BONUS TRACK
The trailer:

New to the Queue

Is that all there is? ...

With trepidation, we give Paul Thomas Anderson and Joaquin Phoenix (last collaborating in the disappointing "The Master") another chance, with Thomas Pynchon's L.A. noir story "Inherent Vice."

Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns with his latest Anatolian epic, "Winter Sleep."

Chris Rock's shot at the next tier, what we hope is a smart and funny film, "Top Five."

The debut of writer/director Talya Lavie about women marking time in an Israeli military outpost, "Zero Motivation."

It looks stupid, but the cast is strong (J.K. Simmons, Nikki Reed, Greg Kinnear), in a story about a man investigating the death of his pet, the noir spoof "Murder of a Cat."

A devastating look at our corporate overlords and income inequality, the documentary "Poverty, Inc."

Our gal Melanie Lynskey is a wife who dumps her husband (Paul Schneider) in "Goodbye to All That."

The one-two punch of Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Amalric in a stalled marriage, "If You Don't, I Will."

Europa, Europa

A pair of clever films with twists that are better experienced fresh, so I'll tread carefully:

FORCE MAJEURE (B+) - This is a good film on the brink of being great, but it never gets there. The Swedish sleeper tackles one of my favorite subjects -- the quiet, sometimes comic, dissolution of a marriage.

The premise is delectable, but the two-hour running time weighs on its three-act structure. A model family -- Wahlberg-handsome husband, model of a wife, cute boy and girl -- are ensconced at a resort in the French Alps for a ski holiday. They sleep together in a king bed in matching jammies, they brush their teeth in front of the bathroom mirror together, they hit the slopes together.

[MILD SPOILER in this paragraph, but nothing that's not in the trailer.] One afternoon, at lunch on an outdoor terrace, we hear a bang that sparks a regular controlled avalanche, and we see the waves of snow peel down a nearby slope. (The cinematography is quite lovely throughout the film.) It quickly becomes clear -- as small talk among the diners grows nervous -- that this avalanche is getting too close for comfort. Panic ensues, and the father, Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke), reacts in a less-than-valiant manner. Everyone survives, but Tomas' wife, Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli), is chilled by the experience.

Writer/director Ruben Oestlund handles this tectonic shift in the marriage masterfully. The way the lunch scene is shot, it's apparent what has occurred but it's not patently obvious. When the dust clears (literally), the gravity (and dark humor) of what has occurred slowly sinks in for the viewer. It isn't until Tomas and Ebba are dining with friends that she blurts out the festering little secret. The tension in their marriage is split open like a wound, and true drama builds as the couple, and their perceptive children, struggle to come to terms with what may have been a shell of a relationship all along, just a white-picket-fence fantasy.

But it's the cutting humor that does the heavy lifting here. We are treated to a wonderful dinner-party scene with another couple, Fanni (Fanni Metelius) and Mats (Kristofer Hivju), who give off the wacky vibes of Carol Kane and Zach Galifianakis. Hivju is a rubber-faced comic, and his expressions are priceless, as Fanni's confidence in her man is shaken, as if Tomas and Ebba's crisis of faith is a communicable disease. (A lurking, heavy-faced maintenance man also provides a few Buster Keaton moments as a silent one-man Greek chorus.)

Meantime, Oestlund drops in the ominous first few bars of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" (Summer) at key moments, using it as a cue that he's ratcheting up the stakes and portending more troubles in paradise. He maniacally takes a seemingly innocuous event and shows how it can exploit the smallest of fissures in a relationship.  Oestlund would have been well-served to have tried to whittle this down closer to a lean 90 minutes. With a nip and tuck here and there he might have wrought a devastating masterpiece. 

BIRD PEOPLE (B) -  Do you ever stop to notice the birds? This film does, though its message can be as inscrutable as that conveyed in a robin's tweet. A quirky study of the human condition, "Bird People" is well served by strong lead performances but it is undercut by a droning middle act that nearly sinks the film.

Successful businessman Gary Newman (our guy Josh Charles from TV's "Sports Night" and "The Good Wife") is holed-up in an airport hotel at Paris' Charles de Gaulle. On the eve of a big meeting, he is having a major midlife meltdown. As the hour of his early-morning flight approaches, he has puddled into a full-on panic attack. When the sun comes up, he has made a major decision that affects his career and his family.

Meantime, we see perky Audrey Cazumet (Anais Demoustier, "Elles"), a college dropout slumming as a maid at the hotel. In subtle movieland fashion, Gary and Audrey's paths will cross. What we don't know is what significance (if any) there is to their pairing at this place and time.

Gary eventually has a video-chat showdown with his wife back in America. Their conversation is alternatively raw and tone-deaf. It drags on for an unbearable length of time (if you notice the background of the scenes their discussion apparently lasts hours; in the film it only seems like it lasts that long).

There's not much more that can be said without spoiling the entire second half of the film, when the focus switches to Audrey. Demoustier has an appeal similar to that of Shailene Woodley, and Audrey bounds around the hotel, privy to intimate glimpses of the residents hotel rooms, just like a sneaky little mouse or, of course, a curious little sparrow perched on the window sill.

Suddenly, magical realism swoops in. The point of view shifts dramatically and we get a literal bird's-eye view of the outskirts of Paris, not only from the sky, but skittering along paths and flitting through buildings. The director, Pascale Ferran (writing the script with Guillaume Breaud), handles this jolt to the senses beautifully. Her camera captures every little movement of our little feathered friend with the same intimacy with which she studies those humans in the hotel. (It appears to be an actual trained bird, not a special effect.) Ferran transforms this live action into an experience akin to the most fanciful of animated stories. It's an incredible feat.

"Bird People" can be quiet and profound, as well as numbingly frustrating. (We really don't need to watch various characters pensively light a cigarette a dozen or more times throughout the proceedings.) Go for a popcorn run during the interminable marital Skype session but then settle back in for a cinematic delight.

That '70s Drift: Late Genius

Stretching the conceit to include a hangover from the '70s, late Cassavetes:

LOVE STREAMS (1984) (B+) -  This plays like John Cassavetes' greatest hits. He's got wife Gena Rowlands in full meltdown mode, he himself plays an aging playboy bent on self-destruction, and there are plenty of women (young and old) for him and his camera to flirt with.

Here Cassavetes are brother and sister. We observe their various breakdowns and idiosyncratic behavior -- he's a wealthy writer, Robert Harmon, with a big home and a harem, she, Sarah, is going through a divorce and trying to retain custody of her daughter. And about halfway through the film (fairly cumbersome at 141 minutes), they meet up. The question is, will they rescue each other, find succor in the love between them.

Cassavetes reaches back to his earliest work, like "Shadows" and "Faces," trafficking in jazz and bebop and oddball characters, like a transvestite who chats him up at a bar early in the film. Robert makes a move on a jazz singer while stumbling drunk and later slow-dances ("Killer of Sheep" style) with her mother, in a scene that references "Husbands," perhaps Cassavetes' masterpiece. Robert's ex appears on his doorstep with the 8-year-old son he's never paid attention to, and Robert baby-sits the boy by taking him to Vegas and abandoning the child while he spends the night with a woman. Because that's what guys do, so get that through your head, OK?

"Love is dead," Robert intones at one point, his voice rising in irritation. "Love is a fantasy little girls have."  His sister has a different opinion. She notes that love "is a stream" that is "continuous, it doesn't stop."

Rowlands is the star here. She is both manic and heartbreaking. She babbles to a luggage attendant somewhere in Europe trying to herd two carts piled high with bags and what is apparently the entirety of her worldly possessions. At one point, back at Robert's house she goes to an animal farm and returns home (via cab) with a small menagerie, including two ponies. Robert doesn't blink; soon he's playing Farmer Bob, tending to the flock as if it's no big deal. He apparently is grasping the emptiness of zipless sex and is finding non-romantic love in a household with his sister.

That household is Cassavetes and Rowland's own home. The rooms are dimly lit (one memorable shot shows a neon jukebox in a darkened room, silhouetting a couple dancing) and the setting claustrophobic. The milieu adds confusion and a sense of dread that helps you identify with the characters. Cassavetes regular Seymour Cassel joins the epic pair in providing some gritty ad-libbing that brings a true 1970s feel to the story.

In the end, though, rather than serving as a career-capping masterpiece (Cassavetes would direct one more film that he didn't write), "Love Streams" never completely comes together as a transcendent narrative. The pieces -- echoes of earlier great films -- never cohere into a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts. 

FEDORA (1978) (B-minus) - You've got to give Billy Wilder credit. His penultimate film as a writer/director is a bald attempt to sum up his career, and it's quaint as hell.

The genius of 20th century cinema brings back William Holden to bookend his own role in "Sunset Boulevard" to reprise the story of the denouement of the golden era of Hollywood. Like in that classic film, we open with a dead body, this one an aging actress who has run into a speeding train. Here Holden carries the story of Barry "Dutch" Detweiler, a struggling indie producer, who is intent on tracking down the reclusive Fedora (Marthe Keller), a Polish star of the studio era, to get her to attach her name to his rewrite of "Anna Karenina" in order to lure investors.

After we see the death of Fedora, we flash back two weeks, when Detweiler was hunting her down in Corfu. It doesn't take long for him to starts unraveling a mystery surrounding Fedora and the tragic events that lead to her death. Who's the old lady who holds a guru-like spell over Fedora, and just what is the creepy Dr. Vando (Jose Ferrer) doing to Fedora to make her seem ageless? And what's with Fedora's obsession with Michael York, the actor she abandoned on the set of her last movie?

Wilder was making a statement about the end of that golden era and the rise of the American New Wave. In a clever meta moment, he has a camera assistant on the set of an early Fedora film point out that the "boobs" she's displaying will run afoul of censors -- a dull observation in 1978, in a movie in which those boobs, tastefully displayed, are the only ones seen in this quaint, PG-rated fare. Elsewhere, Wilder twists himself in knots name-checking as many old actors and directors he can in one screenplay.

Detweiler, as Wilder's avatar, grumps his way throughout this one. "The kids with the long hair have taken over," Dutch laments in one scene. "They don't need a script -- just give them a hand-held camera with a zoom lens." We get it, Billy. Things just ain't like they used to be.

Instead of a loving paean to the past, this plays more like a bitter lament about the hippies and the vulgar "auteurs" trashing the beauty and the legacy of the classy "pictures" he and the studio greats used to produce. It doesn't help that the script is stretched out to a plodding two hours.

Holden makes with the wisecracks, and a plot twist in the second hour is worth waiting around for (or fast-forwarding to). If only Wilder had the zip and the energy to make this one soar like his memorable old films used to.

Noir Chronicles

KISS ME DEADLY (1955) (B) - And do the dames ever kiss him. Clean-cut, wisecracking Mike Hammer is irresistible in this take on Mickey Spillane's iconic gumshoe from director Robert Aldrich ("The Dirty Dozen").

Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is driving along a stretch of road in L.A. when he runs across a woman, Christina (Cloris Leachman's debut) dressed in only a trenchcoat, having escaped from a mental institution. Some men would like a word with her. After their car crashes, Hammer wakes to the sounds of Christina being tortured to death. The thugs put Hammer in a car with her body and push it off a cliff, but damn if Hammer doesn't survive.

The rest of the plot is rather convoluted. It involves another woman in just a trenchcoat, Lily Carver (Gaby Rodgers), who is after a secret, glowing box. (Insert Cold War chills here.) The bodies pile up as Hammer and his assistant/lover Velda (a sexy, often sweaty Maxine Cooper). Velda is willing to do just about anything for her boss, including activities that would qualify him as a pimp.

Aldrich is in command here. He shoots in crisp black and white. He mounts a camera on the back of Hammer's two-seater sports car for a great night shot at a gas station. This is the classic seedy L.A. you think about when conjuring up such old movies.

And check out the young faces. Jack Elam looks like a young Steve Buscemi. Meeker is a dead ringer for Bill Paxton (HBO's "Big Love"). Strother Martin is nearly unrecognizable as a whippersnapper in his one scene. Percy Helton shows up as a coroner.

The third-act twist borrows special effects from the era's monster movies. The ending is a howler. But for most of the film you can dig the snap of the dialogue and the sheen of a city.

The Insurgents

CITIZENFOUR (A-minus) -  Laura Poitras presents one of the ultimate scoops: She wielded a camera in the Hong Kong hotel room of Edward Snowden as he was in the process of spilling government secrets to Glenn Greenwald. The result is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall documentary.

Snowden comes off as a regular guy who earnestly believes that he is doing the right thing in this clearly sympathetic portrait. He has a simple, almost goofy demeanor as he coolly explains the technology behind what he is doing and the reasons for his actions. We see him sit barefoot on the hotel room bed, fuss over his hair, pause before setting the proper gauge on his beard-trimmer. He is polite to his visitors, including a Socttish journalist who doesn't know a thing about him. That aw-shucks presentation doesn't make this any less compelling.

Poitras is slow out of the gates as she tries to set the table, spilling a lot of words on the screen and reading from Snowden's emails, sent under the code name Citizenfour. But throughout the film, she manages to present images that pierce the claustrophobia of the hotel room. She offers blank-eyed views of the construction site of another government warehouse for data collection.

The spy-game exchange of encrypted emails isn't what drives the movie, though it doesn't really drag it down. What jumps off the screen here is the old-fashioned journalism on display. It's not an exaggeration to say that this film has the whiff of "All the President's Men." Greenwald, working at the time for the Guardian, starts releasing drips and drabs of this epic leak. Poitras, herself already under government surveillance for her previous work, shows how Greenwald and Snowden can't hide a certain level of fear that strikes them on occasion, though it's hard to distinguish it from adrenaline or just the buzz from breaking such a big story as the feds close in.

This is history unfolding. It's expert filmmaking. With a little editing, it could be a masterpiece.

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY - PART I (C-minus) -  Easily the worst of the three movies released so far, this shoot-'em-up mostly sits on the screen, presumably pulling its punches in anticipation of Part II, the series grand finale.

With its constant war games (the revolution has begun), this loud mess comes off as a cheap "Batman" movie. That's a shame, because the previous installment -- the second half of the second film -- was a truly artful cross between fine storytelling and teen pop art. Jennifer Lawrence comes off as distracted in her portrayal of Katniss, our fearless heroine.

You can't help feeling bad for the adults, suffering through bad dialogue and slumming like this. Phillip Seymour Hoffman huffs and scowls; Julianne Moore (as the rebel leader) seems shocked that she's actually in such a movie; Donald Sutherland is a cartoon villain at this point; even Stanley Tucci is improbably wooden. (Those pathetic boys -- Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth -- we won't mention.) Only Woody Harrelson who shows up as a sober Haymitch (cursing the Nouveau Prohibition that has taken hold in the District) brings any energy to the proceedings. Elizabeth Banks provides sharp comic relief as a stripped-down, de-glamored Effie Trinket.

This mercifully ends within two hours. And even though the were splitting the final book in two parts, they couldn't come up with a decent cliffhanger. When Katniss's sister's cat steals half the scenes, you know you've got a dud on your hands.

One-Liners: Archives

THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER (2011) (A-minus) - Director Eran Riklis followed up "Syrian Bride" and "Lemon Tree" with this equally affecting character study of a burnt-out corporate manager who reconnects with his own humanity as he accompanies the body of the victim of a Jerusalem bus bombing back to her home in Romania.

The HR manager (he isn't given a name; he's played by TV actor Mark Ivanir) is struggling with his marriage and has returned to work at a major bakery after a sabbatical. He becomes the point man for the company (owned by the "Widow" (Gila Almagor)) in a PR crisis after an employee's body lingers at the morgue a week after the terrorist attack. It turns out that the employee had been quietly dismissed by a lower-level supervisor, but the company still could get raked over in the press for such callous treatment of a worker. (What a quaint idea.) It turns out that the supervisor had fallen in love with her, dismissed her a month earlier to save his marriage, but kept her on the payroll for a while. So, the Widow tells the HR manager to act as an ambassador and accompany the body of Yulia back to her homeland, with a reporter (Guri Alfi) tagging along for the scoop.

A classic road trip and hero's journey ensue. The HR manager and the casket are greeted by the loopy Israeli consul and her husband, and immediately he has to bribe the locals just to get the body on a vehicle out of the airport. Yulia's husband turns out to be her ex-husband, so he can't sign a burial certificate. He helps them track down their son (an engaging Noah Silver), who is living wild on the streets. The Boy insists that they take his mother's body to her hometown and her mother. The 100-kilometer trip through a snowstorm is filled with folly.

When they finally arrive, the Mother's response is heartbreaking. The journey continues.

Riklis (working from a script by Noah Stollman, based on a novel by Abraham Jehoshua), like in his previous efforts, strikes a balance between humor and drama, mainly by finding the basic civility in each of the finely etched characters. Slapstick blends well with pathos. This is a moving human story.

MASCULIN FEMININ (1966) (B) -  Merely above-average Godard from his '60s peak era.

We follow sensitive writer/agitator Paul (Godard regular Jean-Pierre Leaud) as he courts an aspiring pop singer Madeleine (Chantal Goya, sporting a proto-Parker Posey smile). Godard, shooting in grainy black and white, created a near-documentary chronicling the bubbling anti-war movement in Paris in late 1965 and early 1966. We are immersed in the real events of the middle of the decade, with preppy young adults, still Kennedy cute, awakening to the horrors of American's actions in Vietnam. Godard is announcing the arrival of youth power as the Baby Boomers progressed into their 20s. An interstitial title card announces, "This film could be called The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola."

"Masculin Feminin" reminded me of "David Holzman's Diary," shot a year later in New York by Jim McBride, who placed his romantic characters into real settings throughout the city, absorbing its authentic sights and sounds as background material. That American masterpiece compares favorably with this offering from the godfather of the French New Wave. Godard uses natural lighting and dialogue that seems partly improvised (or written on the fly).

Here, Paul and Madeleine date rather chastely while pontificating about love and sex. Paul messes around with a couple of others in Madeleine's circle. Long scenes unfold in cinema verite style, as the characters drone on in conversation. Often one subject is out of frame -- usually Paul as he interrogates the women individually to various degrees. Godard was feeling his way through the early days of the sexual revolution, as his female characters occasionally find a feminist voice. That probably was revolutionary at the time.

New to the Queue

An early holiday lull:

Reese Witherspoon was good in "Mud," and she's assisted by Gaby Hoffmann and Laura Dern in the picturesque "Wild."

A boy growing up with a single mother in Venezuela, "Bad Hair."

Because I'll be coerced: "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part I"

An examination of the exploitation of tomato pickers in California, "Food Chains."

A documentary about two men, a Brit and an American, pursuing eternal life, "The Immortalists."

A drama about Haitian emigres in Brooklyn, "Stones in the Sun."

An Australian spooker, and a directorial debut, Jennifer Kent's "The Babadook."

A documentary about a woman exploring the mystery of her heritage, "Little White Lie."

L'Etranger

NUIT # 1 (B+) - Canadian Anne Emond's feature film debut not only screens like a filmed two-person stage play, but it's mostly made up of two extended monologues, one by the man and the other by the woman, two 30-ish adults who hooked up after a rave for a gloomy one-night stand.

Only two scenes take place beyond the rooms (and surrounding property) of Nikolai's dumpy apartment -- the film opens with slow-motion shots of dancers at a rave, and the film ends in a brightly lit classroom of third-graders. After the rave, Nikolai (Dimitri Storoge) and Clara (Catherine de Lean) stumble through his door and start pawing at each other, stripping in the foyer as they remind each other of their names. The next 15 minutes consist of explicit sex between Clara and Nikolai in the flat.

Clara wouldn't mind a tender night of snuggling the rest of the night or perhaps some conversation. Nikolai doesn't really want her to stick around. He insults her until she runs off in the rain, only to return, soaking wet and in need of his warm shirt. Nikolai eventually unleashes a prolonged riff about his meaningless and hopeless life; he can't hold a job and is essentially a lazy slacker, a beta Millennial. He insults Clara again, she runs out again, and he chases her down and drags her (literally) back to the apartment.

Then it's Clara's turn to unload. A grade-school teacher, she fills the hole inside with sex, drugs and alcohol, shared with random passing strangers. De Lean delivers her epic monologue naked (tastefully) from the bathtub as the man sits quietly listening. The spiel is an impressive tightwire act. At times it threatens to devolve into teen emo diary entries, but it holds together in the end beautifully. (I also feared that she'd be freezing by the end of it without running the hot water. Continuity.)

Emond then breaks the dark mood and offers a coda with Clara's students in her classroom. It's an unexpected exclamation point that is both touching and profound. It can almost be said that it makes the whole movie worthwhile.

This is another tale of arrested development, a true exploration of the insecurities of Nietzsche-loving Millennials. (One reviewer compared it to one of my favorites from the last decade, the Scottish "Morvern Callar.") It's a drab future these drones are facing. Imagine what hell those third-graders will emerge into someday.

ABUSE OF WEAKNESS (C-minus) -  Catherine Breillat had a fine three-picture run with "Romance," "Fat Girl" and the elegant "Brief Crossing." Since then, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage only to return to the director's chair but with unspectacular results.

Here, Breillat tells the story of her medical breakdown and recovery, complicated by the presence of a con man she invited into her life to star in a film and who cleaned her out for more than 700,000 euros. Perhaps her book about the episode was compelling; on screen it fails.

If not for the electrifying Isabelle Huppert, this might not be watchable. Perhaps the greatest actress of our time, she not only embodies the physical struggles of the half-paralyzed "Maud," but she also conveys the mental challenges brought on by the cerebral hemorrhage. She has the most expressive face imaginable even though it seems so often to be a stoic mask.

But Breillat has crafted a tedious and rather inconsequential film. Scenes of Maud struggling to walk and needing assistance grow grating. There must be at least a dozen scenes throughout of Maud lying in bed, usually sleeping, and being interrupted by her buzzing cell phone. What is the point Breillat is trying to make? Is it a form of psychological torture? (It's usually the con man, Vikko (Kool Shen), ringing her up to sweet talk her.) We get repeated scenes of Maud cutting Vikko yet another check.

We're taught to "follow the money," but that's difficult here. Twice Maud claims to Vikko that she doesn't have enough money to buy food. Yet she keeps writing checks on her account to him and to the contractors performing 1.5 million euros worth of work to her mansion. Maud also befriends Vikko's wife, Andy (Laurence Orsino), and there never is a hint of sexual transaction between Maud and either of them.

With little for the viewer to grab on to, this plays more like an acting exercise for Huppert, which is usually worth tuning in for. But "Abuse of Weakness" plays like one of those Hollywood "My Left Foot" vanity projects; and here very little seems to be at stake.

The B Team

LOCKE (B) - If you're going to make a film exclusively about a man driving for 70 minutes while talking on his car phone, there had better be a decent payoff in the end. The ending of "Locke" can be considered understated and bittersweet. Most viewers, I suspect, will feel cheated.

Writer/director Steven Knight presents Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy, "The Dark Knight Rises") a key figure at an international construction company who is expected to oversee a big concrete pour for a major high rise. But on the eve of that assignment, he gets news from a woman he impregnated during a one-night stand that she is going into labor early, so he gets in his car and heads off toward London. During the drive he must assure his baby-mama that he's on his way, break the news to his family, and coach his replacement at work through the preparation for the next day's big pour.

It's to Hardy's credit that he can command the screen for so long and make this artificial writing/acting exercise meaningful. He maintains a calm Vincent Price patter as Locke juggles his personal and professional challenges.

All but the opening shots are filmed in the confines of Locke's car. Knight and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos avoid claustrophobia and play with focus and the color palette of an urban highway at night. The visual conceit loses its snap by the end.

It's hard to ignore the artificiality to the production. Locke's back story is made literal through his rants into his rearview mirror, directed at the person who hurt him most. What's it all building to? Eh, not much. 

JEALOUSY (B-minus) - We give the father-son team of Philippe and Louis Garrel another chance after "A Burning Hot Summer."

Here, young Garrel  plays Louis, a 30-year-old actor who has walked out on his girlfriend, Clothilde (Rebecca Convenant), and their adorable daughter, Charlotte (Olga Milshtein). He lives in a ramshackle apartment with actress Claudia (Anna Mouglalis), who toys a bit with his emotions and wants nothing more than to get out of that dump.

Claudia finds that opportunity through a man of means who is willing to fund a higher standard of living. Clothilde is still reeling from the breakup, reminded of it in some way by little Charlotte, a smart, inquisitive kid. Louis, as Garrel tends to do in these roles, mopes around a lot. He kisses another troupe member. Claudia makes out with a guy she meets in a bar.

The adults are not particularly compelling. What makes this worth watching is Charlotte, the being who connects the main players. Milshtein is quite a talent, and she makes Charlotte playful but perceptive. The outing in which her dad introduces her to Claudia is a small thrill. Rather than portraying the girl as a pawn of the adults or an emotionally scarred child to be pitied, the elder Garel positions Charlotte as a serious character in her own right. That move adds depth to the story and highlights the insecurities and immaturity of the adults around her.

That '70s Drift: Missed Connections

SPACE STATION 76 (B+) -  Patrick Wilson ("Angels in America") is a depressed, closeted captain of a gloomy crew aboard a refueling satellite in this spoofy '70s version of the future.

With an apparent nod to Buck Henry's failed 1977 sitcom "Quark," a handful of 40-something actors (mostly from TV, and including Jennifer Elise Cox who played Jan in the Brady Bunch movies) wrote their first film together and chose one of them, Jack Plotnick ("The Mentalist"), to direct it. They have come up with an offbeat but surprisingly touching story of failed romantic relationships and longings for home.

No one here is happy. Ted (Matt Bomer) is henpecked by his nasty wife, Misty (Marisa Coughlan), and he has daydream visions of a floating, busty naked woman. Their daughter Sunshine (Kylie Rogers) is alternatively neglected or manipulated by misty, especially when Jessica (Liv Tyler) shows up and tries to make friends with Sunshine. Jessica is physically unable to have children, and Misty pounces on that weakness. Donna (Kali Rocha) ignores her own crying infant while she cheats on her husband. Wilson's Captain Glenn mopes around, pining for former colleague Daniel; you expect the Elton John song to bust out at any time, but it never does. We do get plenty of era-appropriate Todd Rundgren. Plotnick wistfully splashes "Hello, It's Me" and follows it up with a sweet scene in which Ted switches off his living quarters' gravity so Sunshine can float around to Neil Sedaka's cheesy "Laughter in the Rain." Keir Dullea, the icon from "2001: A Space Odyssey," has a fun cameo as Jessica's father who struggles to work his video phone; it's broad shtick that still manages to drive home Jessica's deep-seated melancholy.

Jessica is drawn not only to Sunshine but to Ted. She has trouble communicating with the morose Captain Glenn, who makes a couple of deadpan suicide attempts, foiled by the space ship's technology. He eats glumly in the cafeteria, shunned by colleagues as he sits under the garish brown/orange design on the wall (perfectly invoking those ugly San Diego Padres uniforms of the era). Misty pours her heart out to Dr. Bot, a robotic therapist (and gynecologist), whose limited recognition software can barely process trite platitudes as she riffs hilariously. Every once in a while, intentionally crude graphics show asteroids hurtling toward this collection of misfits.

The kitschy sets work well as an homage to the '70s and that decade's idea of futuristic space travel. Artificial intelligence sits side-by-side with top-loading VCRs. The meta presentation provides genuine laughs with an undercurrent of true Gen X-istential angst. 

LIFE OF CRIME (B) - A perfectly serviceable crime caper from the Elmore Leonard files, in the capable hands of Daniel Schechter, who last surprised us with "Supporting Players."

John Hawkes and Mos Def (aka Yasiin Bey) carry this familiar tale of a pair of low-level gangsters kidnapping a rich guy's wife for ransom. The problem here is that the rich guy has just filed divorce and doesn't care if he ever sees his wife again. The film, set in Detroit in 1978, has just enough style and grit to recall that era's modern noir.

Tim Robbins and Jennifer Aniston are well cast as the estranged couple, Frank and Mickey. Frank is using his apartment buildings as a tax dodge, and he is spending time with his young mistress, Melanie (a delightfully impish Isla Fisher). Mickey is snatched from her kitchen by Louis (Hawkes) and Ordell (Mos Def), the same characters from Leonard's "Rum Punch" (which was turned into Quentin Tarantino's "Jackie Brown"). They keep her at the home of a neo-Nazi, and they treat her well; Louis, in fact, develops a tender rapport with Mickey.

The actors save this from devolving into tedium, and Schecter keeps the momentum rolling forward. The rest is clever Leonard plotting. The punch line at the end is expertly delivered.

That '70s Drift: Dog Days

The Guild Cinema offers a fascinating double feature:

THE DOG (B) - Meet John Wojtowicz, the lunatic who tried to rob a bank in August 1972 and was immortalized by Al Pacino's portrayal of him two years later in "Dog Day Afternoon" (see below).

Wojtowicz was a hedonistic hustler who returned from Vietnam in the late '60s, having had his first homosexual experience in the service, and threw himself into the gay culture of New York.  Filmmakers Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren spent years putting together Wojtowicz's story, and they do a workmanlike job re-creating that Vietnam era. They also dig up some fascinating post-Stonewall footage.

Wojtowicz is an entertaining subject. He's on camera a lot, bragging (mostly about his sex life) and reveling in his long-past 15 minutes of fame. We get fresh talking-head interviews with other classic Brooklynites, including his ex-wife Carmen and his mother Theresa, both still shaking their heads at crazy John. (Wojtowicz died in 2006 at age 60 after a battle with cancer depicted here, and his mother also died before the film was released.)

The subject matter pretty much speaks for itself. We get not only a renewed blow-by-blow of the robbery and the tale of Wojtowicz's love for Liz Eden (nee Ernie), the one he allegedly robbed the bank for. (She and others suggest that other money woes were the primary motivation, including mob debts.)

The filmmakers introduce Wojtowicz's mentally challenged brother Tony, and the second half gets a bit maudlin as Tony pushes his frail brother around, the narrative meandering to a finish. This and other weaknesses aside, this is a fun portrait of an interesting individual and a long-gone era.

DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975) (A-minus) - Forty years on, Sidney Lumet's raw nerve of a movie still sizzles, with Al Pacino riffing on a grand stage with his fine supporting cast.

Lumet was just, you know, knockin' something out between "Serpico" and "Network," a man on a roll. He gives this a documentary feeling, with the streets of Brooklyn seething with a wild mob, tense cops and inept robbers. Pacino, as Sonny, finds the right tone, with a character he can go a little crazy with, without taking it over the edge. Sonny's raw confrontations with police hack Moretti (the amazing Charles Durning) have a tinge of danger to them as well as black comedy. John Cazale is all sweaty and monosyllabic throughout as Sonny's sidekick Sal. Chris Sarandon brings heart and pathos as Sonny's transgender lover Leon. James Broderick is chilling as the calculating FBI agent plotting Sonny and Sal's downfall. Bronx native Marcia Jean Kurtz is delightful as the perky hostage. Look for Carol Kane as another teller.

Master screenwriter Frank Pierson ("Cool Hand Luke," "Cat Ballou") crafts pitch-perfect local dialogue. He presents a media circus that feels both quaint and modern. Lumet zips it all along in a breezy 125 minutes. This is one of the treasures of the golden era of American film. 

BONUS TRACK
The Elton John deep cut that plays over the opening credits of Lumet's film and over the closing credits of the new documentary -- "Amoreena":

Cartoon Dystopia

SNOWPIERCER (B-minus) -  Korean pulpmeister Bong Joon-ho envisions yet another apocalyptic future, this one aboard a perpetually moving train traversing a ruined planet. Its politics is two-dimensional but its excessive violence jumps off the screen, pummeling you.

It's just a few decades into the future, and man's attempt to cure global warming has backfired -- the planet is a frozen tundra unsuitable for humans. The few hundred or so survivors have been stuffed onto that moving train, which is said to circumnavigate the globe once a year. The lower classes live in squalor in the rear car. As you move up among the cars life improves. In the head car is Mr. Wilford (Ed Harris), the benevolent dictator who wears silk robes and dines on steak, while the poor folks live in filth and eat "protein bars" of questionable provenance.

The masses plot an uprising. The one-note Chris Evans, widely known as Captain America, stars as Curtis, the hunky revolutionary who conspires with the wise old Gilliam, portrayed predictably by John Hurt, in almost a parody of his classic roles. Meantime, doing Wilford's dirty work and PR is Tilda Swinton as Mason, sporting a ridiculous set of protruding teeth as she bickers with the riff-raff. Octavia Spencer is given embarrassingly little to do as a poor single mom fretting over her son and allowing the producers to punch their diversity card.

As the freedom fighters slowly make their way forward, they recruit the train's keymaster (Kang-ho Song from Bong's "The Host"), a junkie who does it for the fix that Curtis provides. Horrific battles ensue, featuring crude arms straight out of "Game of Thrones." Soon, all nuance is gone, and this becomes a matter of the viewer surviving the onslaught of gore. The resolution is fairly anti-climactic.

Bong does have a sophisticated visual style, and he works wonders in confined spaces. The technological quirks he tosses in give the film just enough of a hint of plausibility that you coast along with the concept throughout. But the characters are conventional archetypes and the journey is familiar. Those who don't mind the relentless carnage and overacting will probably consider this a minor classic. 

THE LEGO MOVIE (C) -  I can't imagine being assaulted by this on the big screen. 3-D would have killed me. Did parents really subject their children to this attack on the senses? How does one react to such neon candy-colored crack?

This action-packed polemic about tyranny and conformity (while also serving as a 100-minute advertisement for a consumer product aimed at children) is brought to us by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who are on a roll of late with the popular kids -- also writing/directing "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs I & II" and directing "21/22 Jump Street." This one is teeming with that tight clique of somewhat smug semi-funny Thursday night NBC prime-time players: Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, Chris Pratt, Will Forte, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett. They mix in with the familiar frat-boy hipster types: Will Ferrell, Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, James Franco's brother Dave, Charlie Day ... Will Arnett. Arnett is actually quite amusing as Batman, the raspy-voiced buffoon who dates the heroine WyldeStyle (Banks). Brie has her moments as Unikitty (a Hello Kitty unicorn), but a little of that goes a long way. Ferrell is surprisingly unamusing as President Business. Morgan Freeman has a few good lines as a wise oracle (typecasting or spoof?).

It had its moments. I laughed out loud at just a few frames of an astronaut floating in space while listening to a satellite broadcast on what looked like a transistor radio. When President Business transforms to his alter-ego, Lord Business, he uses elaborate mispronunciations of ordinary household items -- the Fleece-Crested Scepter of Que-Teep (a Q-Tip) and the Sword of Exact-Zero (an X-acto blade), and his henchmen are ominously referred to as Micro Managers. On paper I bet this is quite clever and funny. But the political statement is weak, and it grows tiring after about twenty minutes. The love story is beyond trite. And a mawkish live-action ending, in which the innocent make the evil ones see the error of their ways, is both too cute and too stupid to justify its attempt at heart-string tugging.

The big question is, what audience would appreciate such a violent film (just how many beheadings are there?) written for simpletons? Besides college stoners, I mean.

Jazz, by the numbers

WHIPLASH (B) - "Whiplash" is a trite, corny, formulaic, melodramatic depiction of the macho-bullshit holy trinity of performance, competition and perfection, commonly found in sports movies. It's also a pretty entertaining two hours.

Miles Teller ("The Spectacular Now") stars as Andrew, a mild-mannered but determined drummer who enrolls at a prestigious music academy in New York (portrayed here by L.A.). There he falls into the trap of the intimidating Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the maniacal, terrorizing director of the school's elite jazz band. Fletcher is part football coach, part drill sergeant, part Bond villain. He is psychologically abusive, and he drives young Andrew near the breaking point.

Andrew wants to be the next great jazz legend. Fletcher is obsessed with discovering and molding the next transcendent jazz god, a white-hot genius like Charlie Parker. He mercilessly harangues his musicians, relying on homophobic putdowns and ethnic stereotypes. He is as punctual as Mussolini. He is as demanding as Vince Lombardi. He's a tyrant utilizing psychological warfare. And Simmons sinks his teeth into that role. He is super-buff, with a shaved head, and he nails every verbal riff like a drum machine. (He's Buddy Rich when he flies off the handle.) Meantime, Teller brings nuance to a poorly fleshed out character. (Paul Reiser is wasted as Andrew's stage father; he's often used mainly for contrast as the alpha male's punchline.)

Young director Damian Chazelle has quite a visual flair, an obvious love of the music (and the jazz scene), and he sure knows how to sell the music, which is often worth staying in your seat for. The performance pieces look legit. He also stages a car crash that is genuinely startling. But as a writer, he traffics in tropes throughout. We see Andrew practice until his hands bleed (numerous times). There's the understanding girlfriend who must be sacrificed for the cause of the team. We get a "There's no crying in baseball jazz" moment. There's the marathon hazing session, complete with shots of a clock to note the passing of hours. We get the buildup to the Big Showdown. There is little to distinguish the narrative from the typical heroic sports saga; "Rudy" with a brass section.

Chazelle hits us with a couple of twists at the end, in the mold of a psychological thriller. They are just clever enough to rescue his story from crescendoing into one big sloppy cliche.

"Whiplash" (the title is taken from a classic tune riffed on repeatedly in the movie) suffers from that generic skeletal structure we find in just about every competition film driven by an over-the-top coach or instructor. But it's got enough of a psychological edge -- mostly the distorted father/mentor performance by Simmons, veins bulging -- that it carries you along to its decent conclusion.

BONUS TRACK
The title song from the film:

New to the Queue

Glorious bounty ...

OOOH! It's a rollicking documentary about one of my favorite bands ever, "Revenge of the Mekons."

I'm at least curious about the new Godard film, even if I probably will never find a place that shows it in 3-D, "Goodbye to Language."

The latest from Bennett Miller ("Capote," "Moneyball"), another short title, "Foxcatcher."


The arty feature film debut from Josephine Decker, "Butter on the Latch."

I could easily be lured to the "Bodyguard"-like rom-com-drahm "Beyond the Lights."

A drama about a musician working as a New York taxi driver, "Love Hunter."

MORE DOCS
A look at polygamy in Bali, "Bitter Honey."

We might get back on the horse with the great Frederick Wiseman and his three-hour surreptitious look at a British institution, "National Gallery."

A study of a B-list actor pushing 40 and struggling with relationship and career, "Actress."

A chronicle of the French businessman who helped end apartheid, "Plot for Peace."

The story of a group in Tanzania who live as simple hunter-gatherers, "The Hadza: Last of the First."

Revisiting the great '80s-era Soviet hockey team, "Red Army."

A look at a former Pennsylvania steel town -- described by the New York Times as a "blue-collar poem threaded with old-timer memories and present-day pain" -- "Braddock America."

The story of a 21-year-old running for city council in Stockton, Calif., "True Son."

BONUS TRACK 
Jon Langford and Sally Timms from the Mekons singing an Alejandro Escovedo song:

The Rattle of the Sexes

THE BLUE ROOM (A-minus) - Familiar face Matthieu Amalric ("Venus in Fur," "The Diving Bell and Butterfly") sits behind the camera and also stars in this slow-burn of a story about the tragic consequences of a love affair.

We open amid the sweaty limbs of Julien (Amalric ) and Esther (Stephanie Cleau). After their lovemaking, she bites his lip, drawing blood. She has marked him. Go explain that to your wife. They also engage in some ominous pillow talk, recklessly chatting about a possible future in that treacherous way of couples in illicit affairs.

Amalric has created a pure suspense film, but one that unfolds gingerly and culminates in an understated final-scene reveal that elicits a shudder. He isn't going for the harshness of a Polanski film or the brashness of Hitchcock, but he's trafficking in that territory. It also brings to mind Asghar Farhadi's devastating study of a broken relationship, "A Separation" (as well as his more recent one, "The Past").

Meantime, this is a smoldering cigarette of a police procedural. Someone has died; we don't know whom until well into the second half of the film. Julien is being questioned by the authorities, with snippets of scenes serving to dish out only some pieces of the puzzle. Is this about Esther's husband? About Esther? Someone else? Flashbacks reveal a strained relationship between Julien and his wife, Delphine (Lea Drucker). He tampers with clues that likely are evidence. Yet he also seems genuinely befuddled by the twists and turns of events.

The claustrophobic spaces in the police station are contrasted with the lovers' chamber, which is highly erotic. That is so even when the room is empty and all we see are mussed sheets. You can almost smell the musk left behind.

Amalric is making a misogynist statement or a statement about misogyny, but I'm not sure which. Julien is portrayed as the hapless victim of both his wife and his mistress. The director's camera leers at times. We watch a fly rest on Esther's bare belly. Not once but twice he lingers just half a beat longer than normal as a naked Esther sensually uncrosses and crosses her legs, clearly displaying her crotch. It's not a playful tease like in "Basic Instinct"; it's borderline pornographic. You get the feeling that Amalric wants to zoom in closer or even inside, return to the womb.

The combination of mood, visuals and sharp storytelling are surreptitiously intoxicating. And Amalric has the good sense and sure hand to wrap this up quickly. It's over in 76 minutes, and there's not a moment wasted. You don't realize that Amalric's film is taking your breath away.
 

Two for Two

We hand out our second A in a row, and the third in as many weeks; can you sense our year-end list beginning to come together?

LISTEN UP PHILIP (A) - This is a film about an asshole. Make that two of them. They're writers. So, no surprise there. And it's about the women -- daughters, girlfriends -- who endure them.

Alex Ross Perry scored big in 2011 with his acerbic sibling road movie "The Color Wheel." For a followup, Perry unleashes a scathing profile of an pompous and prickish young writer, who ditches his girlfriend to be mentored by an equally insufferable Phillip Roth-type novelist. Jason Schwartzman and Jonathan Pryce comfortably slip into those roles of young and old.

This is an odd, refreshing celebration of arrogance, petulance and the indulgence of the male artist. Old Ike Zimmerman (Pryce) invites young Philip (Schwartzman), who is about to drop a second novel, to his country house, where peace and quiet best serve a writer. Philip has been grinding on the last nerve of his girlfriend anyway, so he leaves her in the city and heads off to his retreat, which comes with a teaching gig at a stuffy private college. 

About halfway through, we leave Philip for a while and spend time with his estranged ex, Ashley, a mess of frustration and contradictions played smartly by Elisabeth Moss ("Mad Men"). It's a bold move by Perry to ditch Philip, though most Moss fans would consider it a no-brainer. Her Ashley is no cliched rom-com queen on the rebound or typical Brooklyn brat. When Philip does return at one point, we're reminded of the wonder that is Moss's face -- in a matter of seconds, she cycles through a series of emotions after that brief, tense reunion.

"Listen Up Philip" has the heart and soul of classic '70s American cinema. It's not a stretch to compare this to the works of Cassavetes or Altman (this shares an attitude with "The Long Goodbye" with Elliott Gould). And Perry owes an obvious debt to Woody Allen's "Annie Hall," whose echoes we hear throughout. Yet it feels wholly of this era, as well. Perry, working with "Color Wheel" cinematographer Sean Price Williams," gives this a lived-in feeling.

Meantime, the lines dart around artfully, like a modern Mumblecore Philip Marlowe novel. At one point Ike greets Philip with writerly banter:

"You are selfish and unsentimental!"
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"On the contrary!" 

Perry and Schwartzman even make academic office hours funny. Yet this isn't a flippant, throwaway comedy. Philip meets Ike's daughter, Melanie (Krysten Ritter, who was Jane in "Breaking Bad"), at the country house, and they have a sibling-like flirtation. He also woos a French woman on the faculty. Neither relationship goes where you think it will. Philip also gets roped into Ike's decadent indulgences with Ike's pal and a couple of good-time girls, in a sad little party that tips its brim to "Husbands."

All in all, Perry (writing solo here) has crafted a powerful, mature narrative. It's a movie stuffed with subtle emotion, plot twists and biting one-liners. It's not predictable. It leads you eagerly to its somewhat bitter finish line. And it is ably led by an A-list of talented character actors.

It's easy to dismiss Schwartzman as a silly man-child who plays the go-to goofball in Wes Anderson movies. But the man has many layers, as he shows here and in his delightful HBO series "Bored to Death." He nimbly mixes the verbal with the physical. (A quick shot of him starting a lawn mower  here is laugh-out-loud funny.) He's inherently appealing, like Zach Galifianakis, only with an elitist smirk and an impish gleam in his eye.

Schwartzman and Perry absolutely click in "Listen Up Philip." The women in the film, while sometimes treated as props (that's the dickish point, after all), play off of Schwartzman and Pryce well, not only taking their guff but returning it as well. It's an impressive ensemble film.

BONUS TRACK
One of the joys of "Listen Up Philip" is the attention to detail in the jacket covers of Ike Zimmerman's books. Ike is a stand-in for Philip Roth, and Perry, along with artist Teddy Blanks, toss out some savory titles and graphic designs. Titles include "Madness & Women" and "The Cinch (A Very Easy Novel)."

Slate magazine has some samples, along with a Q&A with Perry and Blanks. You can find that here.

Theater People!

BIRDMAN (A) - This is what the wonder of cinema and storytelling is all about. The always ambitious Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is back on his game with the epic tragedy of a former Hollywood super-hero star desperately grasping for relevance and critical acclaim by staging a Raymond Carver play on Broadway.

Michael Keaton plays Riggan , who used to play the wildly popular Birdman a couple of decades ago before he turned down Birdman IV and his career went south. You might recall that Keaton, ages ago, played Batman a couple of times on the big screen after his "Beetlejuice" breakthrough. Keaton intimately knows what obsolescence feels like.

When we first see Riggan, he is in his dressing room, seated in the lotas position in his underwear (the briefs are a running theme), hovering two feet off the floor -- Inarritu is not shy about announcing the playfulness and grim magical realism that will permeate the story. Riggan can seemingly move objects through telekinesis. And he is also haunted by a voice that serves as his conscience; it's the voice of his Birdman character, presumably Keaton doing his breathy, gravelly imitation of Christian Bale's recent Batman. Are we ensconced in the meta-narrative yet?

Riggan is disappointed in his male co-star in the play, which is poised to start previews. When the co-star is conveniently rendered unable to perform, he is replaced by arrogant hot-shot Mike (Edward Norton), the boyfriend of another star in the show Lesley (Naomi Watts, solid). ("How do you know him?" someone asks Lesley. She replies, "We share a vagina.") Riggan is sleeping with the other cast member, Laura (a wonderfully expressive Andrea Riseborough). He's got his daughter helping out on the crew, Sam, a recovering junkie (a live-wire Emma Stone). And he's trying to maintain peace with her mother, his ex Sylvia (the perfect Amy Ryan). Trying to hold the production together is Riggan's attorney pal Jake (Zach Galifianakis, tightly controlled), a jumble of nerves.

Even if the story weren't compelling, "Birdman" would be worth seeing just for the visual wonder created by Inarritu, the lightning-rod director of "Amores Perros" and "Babel" and the misfires "21 Grams" and "Biutiful." Here, he is a master wielding the camera along with the eminent cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (coming off of Terence Malick's last two films and Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men" and "Gravity"). "Birdman" is shot and edited as if it were one long take. Characters pass through doors and into the next scene, jumping seamlessly in time. The viewer gets sucked in and carried along by the current.

All the while, Inarritu injects a nervous, fumbling jazz drum score. It jangles the entire movie. It serves as both warning and rim shot. It makes it seem as if Riggan is tumbling down a flight of stairs half the time. It is the soundtrack of his apparent nervous breakdown. He's not the only one suffering here; every main character reveals a fatal flaw or paralyzing insecurity. Stone, Norton and Galifianakis feed off of each other's energies.

The dialogue is sharp, the plot tight and propulsive. A plotline involving a bitter, vindictive New York Times theater critic ratchets the tension. Inarritu (also writing, with three others) has created a profound mix of "All That Jazz" and "A Prairie Home Companion." It's a thrill ride that both celebrates and scathingly satirizes the entertainment industry. 

In that opening scene we see this saying tacked on Riggan's vanity mirror: "A thing is a thing. Not what is said about that thing." For two hours, this film thoroughly cloaks itself in the creative ideal; it internalizes the process of transforming some "thing" as well as the criticism of the end product.

The play's the thing. "Birdman" captures that perfectly.

Life Is Short: Land Ho!

Life Is Short is an as-needed series documenting the films we just couldn't make it through. We like to refer to these movies as "Damsels in Distress." Previous entries are here , here, here, here, here. and here.

To quote IMDb: "A pair of ex-brothers-in-law set off to Iceland in an attempt to reclaim their youth through Reykjavik nightclubs, trendy spas, and rugged campsites."

What "Land Ho!" consists of -- at least the first half hour or so, with no sign of veering from its course -- is one of the two main characters, Mitch (played by Earl Lynn Nelson), being a sexist pig. It's as if AARP produced "Porky's." It was not very interesting and not a little bit offensive. Sensing it was going nowhere, I pulled the plug a third of the way through.

On to the next adventure.

Title: LAND HO!
Running Time: 96 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull: 36 MIN
Portion Watched: 38%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 51 YRS, 11 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 81.2 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: A crossword puzzle with random HBO in the background.
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 125-1.

So I Don't Have To

In an occasional feature, we present capsule reviews from correspondents who go see the movies that we don't have an interest in seeing.  Today, veteran filmgoer Phillip Blanchard chimes in on the latest Christopher Nolan spectacle: 

INTERSTELLAR - Some complain that “Interstellar” is too long. Well, it’s a long story. Other whiners carp that they can’t hear dialogue because of the loud music and thunderous sound effects. Well, listen more closely. 

You’ve also heard a bunch of Stephen Hawking wannabes bitch about how the movie distorts known physics. Well, first of all, this is a movie, so live with it. And anyhow, how can we be so sure that our understanding of physics won’t change? Smart guys 2,000 years ago thought they knew everything.

“Interstellar” is a terrific science-fiction movie that no one will confuse with, say, “Guardians of the Galaxy.” The acting is very good. The special effects are outstanding and don’t depend solely on CGI like so many other space-based movies. That loud music is perfect for this movie.

It’s exhausting, and I can’t imagine ever watching it again.

Guest grade: A

Real Gone

A couple of mainstream, and fairly decent, offerings:

GONE GIRL (B+) - It's a shame that a person can't enjoy the book and the movie equally. Some folks out there are coming to the movie fresh and probably enjoying the hell out of it. Those of us who loved the book can appreciate the thriller's adaptation, even though we know all of the twists in advance.

David Fincher, as usual, is technically adept but lacking in heart. He creates a mood and churns the story, but there's little thrill or delight in the movie as a whole. In other words, despite a screenplay from the novelist, Gillian Flynn, "Gone Girl" isn't the page-turner it is in print.

Rosamund Pike stars as Amy Dunne, the New Yorker yanked by her husband to Missouri, only to go missing on their fifth anniversary amid signs of foul play. Ben Affleck, workmanlike, is nonetheless slightly off-cast as her husband, Nick, who follows the clues Amy left for him, as she did every year on their anniversary. Affleck's everyman quality lacks that certain indefinable edge that Nick had in the book, despite the first key twist that exposes a character flaw.

The cast is strong, but Fincher fails to draw sublime performances out of them. Pike is the weak link of the first half. She brings nothing special to the character of Amy, and Fincher seems to be doing something to her voice on the soundtrack, making it dreamlike, as if Pike's voice is dubbed. Carrie Coon (in the role that used to be filled by Janeane Garafolo) plays Nick's snarky but sympathetic twin sister, Margo, and she finds nuance here, as she did in HBO's dull "Leftovers." Tyler Perry is serviceable but nothing special as the shady celebrity lawyer who defends Nick, the suspect in his wife's disappearance. Kim Dickens is delightful but somewhat cliched as the hard-ass detective on Nick's case. Affleck (in a role that used to be played by ... Ben Affleck) hits his marks but overdoes the bland side of Nick. Lola Kirke lights up the screen as a sexy, scheming trailer-park denizen. Missi Pyle sinks her teeth into the giddy Nancy Grace role of the haughty cable news scold. (The media circus, in general, comes off as too much of a caricature.)

By the time Neil Patrick Harris arrives to ham it up as Amy's old friend/stalker, Desi, the narrative starts to strain credulity, and the run time -- two and a half hours -- draws a bit of attention to itself. The subsequent twists aren't quite as scrumptious when splayed on the big screen, but they qualify as solid entertainment, and there's no denying that this has broad appeal. It might even seem compelling to those new to the story.

If not transcendent, it's often a lot of fun.

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS (B) - Shailene Woodley doesn't have to have cancer to make us want to weep just watching her act. She's endlessly appealing, and she's the main reason that this manipulative little weeper doesn't devolve into slushy schmaltz.

This Millennial "Love Story" is fairly predictable but not without its charms. It's not a little thing to watch a young Hollywood actress wear oxygen tubes on her face, throughout an entire film. Woodley is Hazel, a high-schooler suffering from a terminal form of lung cancer. At a support group meeting (hosted with goofy Christian enthusiasm by comedian Mike Birbiglia) she meets Gus, a pretty boy who lost his right leg to cancer but who now is apparently disease-free.

Gus (newcomer Ansel Elgort) is silver-screen perfect, and he and Hazel are beyond cute as a couple. In one of the more fetching touches, she calls him Augustus and he ritualistically calls her Hazel Grace. They develop a quaint secret-couple word: "Okay." And they bond over her favorite book, about a dying girl, a novel that ends in mid-sentence.

They are determined to visit the American author exiled in Amsterdam to ask him to explain the book's ending. They want to make the trip while Hazel is still healthy enough to do so. Eventually they make it to the apartment of Van Houten, a stereotypical drunken and bitter writer, expertly rendered by Willem Dafoe. That meeting goes poorly, but the Amsterdam trip is magical for the smitten teens. A trip to Anne Frank's home is quite moving; we watch as Hazel lugs her oxygen tank up to the attic, and we swoon when Hazel and Gus embrace amid the tourists.

The film is less weepy and more clever than I expected. But the dialogue is just too precious. The supporting characters don't fare so well. Laura Dern has a thankless role as Hazel's nerve-racked mother. Nat Wolff ("Palo Alto") plays the cliched sassy best pal who is dumped by his slutty girlfriend and is losing his sight.

Writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber definitely know how to tell a story. They crafted the disappointing but well received "(500) Days of Summer" as well as the winning Woodley vehicle "The Spectacular Now." This script has a natural rhythm, and it dabbles in the profound. The miserable writer conveys to the kids the concept of gradations of the infinite, and the characters echo that idea at the end, searching for infinite existence in the many moments in their numbered days.

It's a lovely thought. And Woodley, a seriously authentic actor, sells this maudlin shtick.

The Power of Music

ALIVE INSIDE (B-minus) - This feel-good documentary is just a little too perfect in its advocacy of music as a way to heal the sick, especially elderly folks with dementia. Michael Rossato-Bennett follows true believer Dan Cohen as the founder of Music & Memory  visits assisted-care facilities and tests out his theory about the healing effects of the tunes from the patients' youth.

Repeatedly we see instances of older folks suddenly coming to life and firing off fresh neurons connecting the music to long-lost memories. It's all a bit too perfect, though. I got the feeling that some of the scenes were either staged or goosed, with the subjects maybe coached a bit before the headphones were slapped on them. We never see an example of Cohen failing to snap a senior out of a stupor.

As heartfelt advocacy, though, "Alive Inside" can be quite entertaining. Scenes with a younger man suffering from multiple sclerosis is quite moving. Others work with Cohen to pick out their favorite oldies, dredging up the Beach Boys or Glenn Miller. If it were a more objective rendering, it would be downright inspiring.

THE BALLAD OF RAMBLIN' JACK (2000) (C+) -  A daughter with marginal filmmaking skills -- and a voice unsuited for narration -- makes a documentary about her quirky folkie father. The results are underwhelming. Jack Elliot was a key link between Woody Guthrie, whom he befriended, and Bob Dylan, who copied them both.

Aiyana Elliott tries desperately to infuse drama and pathos into a narrative of the absentee father, but she never connects the dots. Thus, her attempt to create a Big Drama falls flat. She also tends to gloss over her father's failing, dismissing his apparent drug woes of the 1970s with a casual aside.

We do get great footage, including the Brooklyn Cowboy jamming with Johnny Cash on Cash's late '60s TV show. We get flashes of Elliott's verbal ramblings on stage, but again, we don't get that full picture.

This is an obvious valentine to the old folk legend, but at nearly two hours, the subject matter sags by the end.


1991: THE YEAR PUNK BROKE (D+) - A crappy home movie focused mainly on Thurston Moore as his band Sonic Youth tours Europe in August 1991 with Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr. and a handful of other bands from the Heyday of the Planet of Sound. Moore riffs verbally (and nonsensically, mostly) over crude footage in between performances, mostly by Sonic Youth.

It was a heady time, but you wouldn't know it from this shaky chronicle of hipster slackers, shot by one of Moore's hangers on. The footage of Kurt Cobain and his mates are interesting, but otherwise this all plays like a rather sad snapshot of a forgotten era.

Oddly, many of the performances are chopped up -- to the point where very few of the images are actual live shots, as if the filmmakers were limited by copyright issues.

BONUS TRACK
Henry, 93, is transformed by music (from "Alive Inside"):

Let Me Count the Cliches

ST. VINCENT (C) - Here's a list of what went wrong with this movie:

• A pregnant hooker.
• A pregnant hooker with a heart of gold.
• Naomi Watts as a pregnant Russian hooker with a heart of gold.
• Naomi Watts doing a ridiculous Russian accent.
• Bill Murray doing an accent.
• Chris O'Dowd.
• Chris O'Dowd not doing an accent.
• Chris O'Dowd as a priest.
• Chris O'Dowd as a wisecracking priest, maybe exaggerating his accent.
• A character valiantly recovering from a stroke, seemingly in a matter of days.
• A child actor making his screen debut.
• The aging wife suffering from dementia not recognizing her loving husband.
• The noble nurse.
• The noble single mother who is a nurse.
• Brooklyn, yet again.
• Sheepshead Bay, to be exact.
• Characters at odds brought together by the innocence of a child.

Here's what went right: At the end, in the big sappy scene that this all builds up to, I cried. Those characters and that hack of a filmmaker got to me. And stick around for the end credits, when Bill Murray sings along to a Bob Dylan song; it is a glimpse of the old Murray, rather than the grizzled actor tossed out to sea with an insipid script.

One-Liners: Drama

THE GERMAN DOCTOR (B) - A surprisingly effective little drama about a family that crosses paths with Josef Mengele in Argentina around 1960.

Buenos Aires director Lucia Puenzo ("XXY," about an intersexed 15-year-old) lights a long fuse for this slow burn of a movie. A couple -- Eva (Natalia Oreiro) and Enzo (Diego Peretti) -- and their three children welcome the mild-mannered doctor into their home.  Their 12-year-old daughter, Lilith (the adorable Florencia Bado), is tiny for his age, and the family's guest offers his experimental hormone therapy to help her grow. Meanwhile, Eva is pregnant with twins, and Mengele takes a keen interest in her impending offspring.

Puenzo creates low-grade thriller without resorting to the cheap tricks of throwaway horror flicks. (Though a quick shot of Mengele marking little Lilith's height in a doorway with a switchblade is downright chilling.) Instead, she revels in the fine print of Mengele's medical sketches and notebook scribblings; the attention to detail is riveting. The director also crafts a side story about Enzo creating prototypes for a doll that has a little mechanical beating heart. The parallels between the earnest father and the sadistic psychopath are engaging.

The film gets dragged down by a rather pedantic winding narrative involving a Mossad agent seeking to bag the big fish. "The German Doctor" nags long after its economical runtime.

LOVE IS STRANGE (C+) -  This enjoyable wry comic drama stokes warms feelings and admiration during its run time, but its charms fizzle not long after viewing. Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) are an aging couple who are forced to sell their Manhattan apartment after they get married and George loses his job as a music teacher at a religious school. Short on cash, they are forced to crash -- separately -- with friends and relatives.

Ira Sachs ("Keep the Lights On") knows how to craft a story, but this one is a little too tidy. Lithgow and Molina are strong, but not so much the rest of the cast, including Marisa Tomei looking distracted as the niece-in-law who takes Ben in with her husband and son. (Ben and the teen sleep in bunk beds.) That domestic set-up is perpetually flat; it is intended to convey the tedium of merging households, but it mostly comes off as tedious, with a side story involving the teen and his pal that goes nowhere. George, meantime, chafes at the constant social buzz at the apartment where he has landed, taken in by two gay cop pals.

The biggest flaw here is the initial set-up. Why can't Ben and George find a small place together? Even if they do have to sleep in separate places, why can't they spend every day together at either place? If it's only temporary, why not go to the place that can accommodate both of them -- an invitation from Mindy to hang out with her in suburban Poughkeepsie? In fact, Christina Kirk's Mindy is one of the few supporting characters with any true energy. But she mostly disappears after the first 20 minutes.

After that, we get a sweet love story about separation and longing. It's technically fine but its significance fades in the end.

Only in New York

In a variation on New to the Queue, we list the past two weeks' openings in New York City, which we would be bingeing on if we happened to live there this week:

Two of the most anticipated films of the year: Michael Keaton spoofing his own career highlight as a superhero in Alejandro Inarritu's "Birdman," and the return of Alex Ross Perry ("The Color Wheel") snagging Jason Schwartzman, who plays a variation on his "Bored to Death" writer, in "Listen Up Philip."

The impressive debut of Justin Simien, "Dear White People."

For a quick pick-me-up, a documentary about genocide, "Watchers of the Sky."

Another doc, a sympathetic one about the hero/traitor Edward Snowden, from PBS "POV" trailblazer Laura Poitras, "Citizenfour."

Lynn Shelton stumbled last time out, and we're not big fans of Keira Knightley, but we'll check out "Laggies."

A Swedish film about a relationship, with avalanches as a metaphor (nice), "Force Majeure."

A look at a fading artist losing the battle against Alzheimer's, "Glen Campbell ... I'll Be Me."

Rhythm. And Blues.

MEMPHIS (A) - Willis Earl Beal is having an existential crisis as he wanders around Memphis mostly not working on his latest album, busy instead with his own brand of self-discovery.

Beal, playing a variation on himself under his own name in this ethereal drama, floats through the city, interacting with preachers, flirtatious women, a one-legged pal in a Cadillac, and wide-eyed children frolicking about, including one boy who seems to be an alter-ego and who bookends the film. Beal (originally from Chicago by way of Albuquerque) is surrounded by urban decay, and he escapes through a mystic dialogue with the city's majestic trees. He believes in magic, not God. He's a poet and a philosopher and a lost soul. A ghost. He's obliquely out of place when attending church.

Tim Sutton, with his second film, has created a mesmerizing masterpiece, or maybe just a grand wank; we'll see on subsequent viewing. It shares a mood with Charles Burnett's classic '70s film "Killer of Sheep" (down to the slow-dance to a treasured oldie). There's barely a story here; it's more of a series of scenes, beautifully rendered. Sutton has a natural feel for the world around us. His shots linger an extra beat or two. His camera is hungry and curious. He trains a close-up on a moving car's bashed-in rear window, the pieces gently breaking off like pieces of a chandelier, speaking of which, there's one of those set on a cardboard box in the middle of a living room, obliquely out of place.

The film seems to transcend time. It's apparently set in the present (the cars and fashions look current), but we also see a TV with rabbit ears, and there's not a cellphone or other digital device in sight. Beal sports a retro nerfro. The soundtrack is pure grit. Beal's music mixes with snippets of obscure dusties, blissfully soulful. You want to reach out and grasp those melodies, but they fly by or fizzle, leaving you both deliriously teased and glumly nostalgic.
I could watch this again just to listen to it. And again, just to let the images flit past. Slip into a reverie. Hover over Memphis like a tree branch, soar through the air like a thoughtful, sensitive man searching for his soul.

BONUS TRACK
A central song from the soundtrack:

One-Liners: The Dark Side

THE ARBOR (2010) (B+) -  This is an ambitious documentary from Clio Barnard (who directed the more recent feature drama "The Selfish Giant") about the troubled playwright Andrea Dunbar. It is, in some ways, a simple story of a family.

Barnard, however, makes the unusual choice of having actors lip-sync to the recorded voices of real people, including Dunbar's daughters. Surprisingly, the gimmick isn't distracting. Meantime, actress Natalie Gaving plays "the Girl," who acts out scenes from Dunbar's plays on the grounds of the English estate where Dunbar lived, in Bradford.

Those scenes are rough, full of anger and alcohol and local slang. Dunbar's daughters struggle to survive, battling their own demons. Manjinder Virk is at times riveting as Dunbar's mixed-race daughter Lorraine. (Dunbar had three kids by three different men.)

Barnard also tosses in clips of Dunbar from a BBC documentary. The mix of voices produces an ethereal quality, giving the dialogue a disembodied feel, sort of like Terence Davies' "Distant Voices, Still Lives." It is a liberating experience.

THE GALAPAGOS AFFAIR: WHEN SATAN CAME TO EDEN (B-minus) - A fascinating but surprisingly tedious chronicle of the German eccentrics who sought out paradise on the island of Floreana in the Galapagos in the 1930s.

War was on the horizon back in Europe in 1934, and these settlers seemed to create a microcosm of that harrowing milieu in their own rural society. When a baroness arrives with two apparent lovers in tow, the drama explodes. The scenes of the baroness reveals a vivacious, modern-looking woman. Actual footage from a short film shot at the time, with the residents cavorting in costume, adds a bizarre twist.

The flaw here is the greed of the filmmakers, Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine, who try to cram in too many characters and talking heads into a bloated two hours. We see and hear from descendants of the settlers, but it can be difficult to keep track of them all.

Meantime, footage and photographs get repeated on loops ad nauseam. Celebrities lend their voices, including, oddly, the non-Germans Cate Blanchett and Connie Nielsen. In the second half, we're treated to a murder mystery that led to the downfall of the settlement.

What happened 80 years ago seems fascinating. This is an unsuccessful attempt to convey that story.