Daydreams of Cannes

Picking at the festival lists popping up during spring, including the mega-list of directors at Cannes:

THE CANNES LINEUP

• Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to Anatolia with "Winter Sleep."
• The mythical Dardenne Brothers offer up "Two Days, One Night," starring Marion Cotillard.
• Two septuagenarian godfathers of British cinema are on the bill: Ken Loach ("The Wind That Shakes the Barley") with red-scare period piece "Jimmy's Hall," and Mike Leigh ("Naked," "Vera Drake") with art biopic "Mr. Turner."
• Jean-Luc Godard, who butchered the spoken word in "Film Socialisme," goes the rest of the way with "Farewell to Language."
• Bennett Miller ("Capote," "Moneyball") goes for the hat trick, with the help of Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum, in the wrestling pic "Foxcatcher."
• Atom Egoyan looks to give Ryan Reynolds some gravitas in the child-snatching thriller "The Captive."

THIS PAST WEEKEND IN SAN FRANCISCO

• "Heaven Adores You," a documentary about the late singer-songwriter Elliot Smith.
• Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-liang ("What Time Is It There?", "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone") is back with "Stray Dogs," about an impoverished Taipei family.
• A French legend offers up a five-part miniseries, clocking in at 225 minutes, an examination of the world of art, "Agnes Varda: From Here to There."
• From Argentina's Menolo Nieto, a labor-organizing drama "The Militant."

TRIBECA LEFTOVERS

• Angus MacLachlan, writer of 2005's "Junebug," writes and directs "Goodby to All That," starring TV comedian Paul Schneider as a divorced father looking for romance.
• A mystery involving intercut stories, from Italy, "Human Capital."
• Another generation of Coppola, Gia (Sofia's niece), translates stories by James Franco with "Palo Alto."
• Keith Miller follows up "Welcome to Pine Hill" with the gangland tale "Five Star."

SCRAPS FROM BERLIN

• Richard Linklater spent 12 years filming kids growing up for his drama "Boyhood."
• An even more recent film from Tsai Ming-liang, "Journey to the West."

O, the Humanity

THE HUMAN SCALE (B-minus) - A fascinating topic but a disappointing documentary.

Andreas Dalsgaard fills us in on the dire projections for urban life, and he explores ways in which humans can save themselves from suffocating as a species. He relies on architect Jan Gehl, who has studied how urban areas can be more inviting to people. The big idea -- explored by several venues, including Copenhagen and New York -- involves wide swaths of pedestrian-only city centers, where cars are unwelcome. The concept, however, gets beaten into the ground, making the film feel repetitive.

This all feels strangely incomplete. There's little talk of what to do about suburbs and rural areas, where dependency on cars and trucks (and barrels of oil, of course).

Another distraction in the film is the number of non-native English speakers as talking heads. It sounds callous, but it was hard to understand some of them; Dalsgaard might have been better off letting them speak their first language and putting subtitles beneath them. 

We get some fascinating insights at times, and some of the shots are lovely, but as cinema, this one too often just sits on the screen, spinning in circles. 

DATE & SWITCH (C) - Answering the question, finally, what would have happened if John Hughes made After School Specials?

Director Chris Nelson and writer Alan Yang dredge up a tired old trope: Two high school dudes vow to lose their virginity before the prom. The twist is, one of them turns out to be gay. What follows is passable entertainment, though it has a certain charm. The script has its occasional moments, but too often is sounds like it was written by a computer program. And the young actors are barely up to the task of making it seem plausible.

The cast, oddly, has the familiar look of a cheap knock-off. Nicholas Braun as Michael looks like a young John Cusack. Hunter Cope (Matty) has that Seth Rogen/Jimmy Kimmel meat-headedness. The pretty gal (Em), Dakota Johnson, resembles early Elisabeth Shue. The cute boy (Greg) is played by Zach Cregger, who gives off a Ryan Reynolds/James Van Der Beek vibe. It's as if the filmmakers wanted us to do double takes and wonder if maybe this wasn't some unearthed gem from Before They Were Stars.

The adults, a talented trio of actors, don't get much to do. Gary Cole and Megan Mullally just sort of drift. Nick Offerman, as usual, finds depth and quirk as the sensitive, understanding parent.  

The gay theme struggles for credibility; at times the production comes across as enlightened, but the campy gay-bar scenes induce cringing. Their hearts are in it, but the talent is lacking.

O, Brother

MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS (B) - A meta-movie, a B-movie, a movie within a movie about making a movie.

Matt Berninger, the lead singer for the great American band The National, invited his shlubby younger brother Tom along on tour as a roadie, and Tom, a frustrated filmmaker, shot footage. The result is a dumb, charming story about a Loser Kid Brother struggling to assert his obnoxious, yet sweet, identity and create his own work of art.

The National, shown circa 2010, are just emerging as an indie powerhouse. Interestingly, the rest of the band consists of two pairs of brothers. (There are the classically trained songwriters the Dessners and the rhythm section, the Devendorfs.) Poor Tom Berninger -- rumpled, pudgy, with a scraggly beard and stringy hair -- seems daunted by that combination of kinship and hipster rock stardom.

Berninger leaves in some funny little scenes, such as the establishing or set-up shots in which he asks his interview subjects to pose or look pensive in classic documentary style. He asks goofy questions, like whether the band members carry their wallets on stage. He also is unabashed about trafficking in cheesy stoner humor. He catalogs his own series of fuck-ups that would have gotten him fired if he wasn't related to the star of the show. He goes home to interview their mother, who seems sincere when she tells Tom that he has always shown more creative proclivities than Matt, mainly as a talented visual artist. The climax of the film involves his efforts to edit his footage into a coherent product (assisted by Matt's wife).

We're teased with only snippets of The National's music, but then, this ain't "Stop Making Sense." This is an imagining of what might have happened if Beavis or Butt-head grew up and hit the road with the band. It's an extended therapy session about family dynamics, pop-culture fame and jumbled creative dreams. The movie has plenty of laughs, but the final scene, shot during a rollicking encore, catches in the throat a bit, as we get a fleeting glimpse of the soul of a baby brother.

BONUS TRACK
In the hands of a real documentary filmmaker, the legendary D.A. Pennebaker, capturing the epic "Mr. November" live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2010:

O, Death

ELAINE STRITCH: SHOOT ME (A-minus) - This is a fascinating rumination on how we live our lives and how we see it to the end. This type of film could have been done with any person as its subject (in the "ordinary people" category), but it certainly helps here to have sassy stage legend Elaine Stritch, who once put the "broad" in Broadway, as the center of attention. As always, she's a hoot.

The camera follows Stritch as she winds down her career as a torch singer, fumbling her lines during rehearsals and suffering various medical setbacks, coming to terms with the fact that her days in the limelight are numbered. As she approaches age 87, she knows, too, that her days in the daylight are numbered, as well.

Chiemi Karasawa, known for most of her career as a script supervisor, directs her first film here, and she rides her star's coattails well. Karasawa also shows a sure hand in balancing the sweet with the bittersweet. She lets Stritch do her "theater people" thing, vamping with her entourage, killing it on stage with her music director, and horsing around with her hip "30 Rock" pals.  She also spins entertaining tales. She had a date with JFK and regrets not snapping up Ben Gazzara when she had the chance; though she did end up with the love of her life, John Bay of the English muffin family. One bawdy confession she makes during a dinner date leaves John Turturro speechless.

Your tolerance for Stritch may vary. (I always like to think of her as the very first Trixie Norton in a nascent "Honeymooners" sketch, ca. 1951.) She's definitely a diva with a long history of alcohol abuse. After more than 20 years of sobriety, she started, in her 80s, to allow herself one drink a day, and you savor it along with her. A clip from around 1970, of Stritch in studio recording a soundtrack, shows her acting like a brat and looking haggard, certainly older than 45.

Stritch here bravely puts herself on display, for better and for worse. She still looks sharp in her trademark tights (covering those long chicken legs) and oversized men's dress shirt. But we also get to see her waking up in the morning and in the hospital during a weeklong stay, battling diabetes and old-fashioned old age. Eventually we see her shopping for a home back in the suburbs of Detroit, where she grew up. (Last year, she finally packed up her things at Manhattan's Carlyle Hotel and moved to the sticks.)

This all plays much better than "Ain't in It for My Health," the skin-deep documentary featuring Levon Helm of The Band. Karasawa took her time and patiently peeled away a few layers from Stritch's tough exterior. Stritch anxiously hypothesizes about what awaits her at the end. The result is both melancholy and life-affirming.

BONUS TRACK
Stritch, in a previous HBO special, deconstructing Sondheim's lyrics in "I Feel Pretty."

All in a Day's Work

Three movie-going experiences in one day; a snapshot:

OUT OF THE FURNACE (B-minus) - Several fine performances in search of some cohesive direction and a decent script.

Writer/director Scott Cooper reels off more macho posturing in this follow-up to "Crazy Heart," which I skipped. His script (written with Brad Ingelsby) is a string of awkward cliches and derivative narrative hooks, playing out like a two-hour Bruce Springsteen song. Here, Christian Bale is Russell Baze, a Pennsylvania steel-mill worker doing penance (after doing time) for a fatal DWI wreck and pining for the woman who dumped him for a cop while he was in prison. (Poor Zoe Saldana gets the same thankless role as Eva Mendes did in "The Place Beyond the Pines," as the prop for a moody bad boy.)

Russell's brother Rodney (an intense Casey Affleck) is a four-tour Iraq Army vet who makes ends meet by street fighting but just ends up more in debt to club owner John Petty (Willem Dafoe). Petty, in turn, gets caught up with the street-fighting impresario and drug dealer Harlan DeGroat (a growling Woody Harrelson), a subhuman Appalachian menace. You've seen this all before, and for good measure, Cooper rips off a little bit of "The Deer Hunter" -- for a painfully trite sequence in which the hunting of a deer is intercut with the pummeling of a street fighter. (Would you believe that the hunter can't bring himself to pull the trigger once he's got Bambi in his sights?) In other scenes, Russell tries to convince Rodney to join him at the mill, because it was good enough for their dad, dammit, so it should be good enough for them. Yeah, that sort of thing. It borders on parody at times.

It's an impressive cast, but each actor is going off at his own pitch and no one is really connecting here. Dafoe looks like he can't believe he actually has to utter some of those stupid lines. Forest Whitaker shows up as the cop who wins Russell's gal, but Whitaker is all over the place with his character and adopts a bizarre growl that seems to come from channeling Broderick Crawford. Bale turns in his usual powerful performance (he really is a wonder in the quiet moments), Harrelson's shtick is getting stale, and Sam Shepard is around just to remind us that his is a Movie about Men, dammit. This is a curiosity that is tolerable with some strategic fast-forwarding. 

ALTERNATIVE FILM/VIDEO: BELGRADE 1982 (incomplete) - Bryan Konefsky and the students at UNM conspire with Basement Films each April in Albuquerque to produce Experiments in Cinema, a weeklong exploration of experimental filmmaking. I made it to one event this year, a sampling of five short films that were part of the 10-film slate at Belgrade's cine-club festival in 1982, hosted by the original founder, Miodrag "Misha" Milosevic.

My favorite of the works from the former Yugoslavia was the mesmerizing "Aura in Aurovision," hypnotic visual images that looked like Earth rolling and careering through the universe, to the accompaniment of a hooky, bluesy garage-riff workout. (Don't look for any of this on YouTube; this is obscure stuff.) I believe "Aura" was Slovenian.

Also featured: "Big Town (Velo Misto)," which used TV sounds and images to accompany dense images that occasionally looked like body parts; "The Passion of Joan of Arc," using images from a book and subtitles in a way that conjured up Ken Burns by way of Guy Maddin; "Kras 88," a stop-action film that used stones to great effect; and "Pression," another hypnotic mind-bender that, unfortunately, cut out before the end. One of the charms of an experimental film fest; you can't tell when there's a technical breakdown.

THE SECRET DISCO REVOLUTION (B-minus) - A totally cheesy look back at the dance craze of the 1970s, filled with needless distractions but buoyed by juicy archival footage and where-are-they-now talking heads.

Writer/director Jamie Kastner doesn't trust his material, apparently, so he concocts both a grand theory and a gimmick. The theory is that disco was just as political and culturally significant as the folk revival during the civil rights era or the punk movement. It's hard to tell, though, whether he really believes that or is just testing out a hypothesis that will be ridiculed late in the documentary by the likes of Harry Wayne Casey (KC & the Sunshine Band), Thelma Houston and the members of the Village People. His only "expert" is USC's Alice Echols, most of whose observations are either painfully obvious or logically suspect (she claims that Barry White was the first person to write love songs about women).

The gimmick is a running gag throughout in which he has three present-day actors -- done up as a disco Mod Squad -- running around with props (a disco ball, a published "manifesto") and acting out wacky mastermind scenarios as if this all had been some secret master plan to change the world. It's a distraction. Alas, as Robert "Kool" Bell and others acknowledge, disco was not an engagement with the world and the Oil Embargo '70s, but rather a distraction, an escape -- an excuse to get coked-up and dance until dawn.

And that's the part which makes the film worth watching. Clips showing Studio 54 DJ Nicky Siano, and hitmakers like Maxine Nightengale, Barry White, Anita Pointer, Martha Wash and Gloria Gaynor evoke the youth and joy and horrid fashions of an era that churned like one long night fever. And when the sun came up and the decade was ending with a love hangover, it all came crashing down in August 1979 with a resounding Knack, and just like that, new wave and nascent hair bands took back the airwaves and charts.

BONUS TRACKS

It's a cool chick in a mad 'fro lip-syncing in front of a green screen. Let's dance!



A Chicago flashback -- Steve Dahl's summer 1979 Disco Demolition, named-checked in the doc, blew things up real good:

Girls Gone Wild

UNDER THE SKIN (C) - I'm not a sci-fi aficionado by any means, so take me with a grain of salt, but this spooky mood piece -- starring Scarlett Johansson as an alien in Scotland luring men to their deaths -- is about as slow and uneventful as they come.

There is very little dialogue, and what we do get is often mumbled by Johansson or rendered indecipherable by Scottish brogues. She is assisted (monitored?) by a mystery man who speeds around on a motorcycle.

I think I know what director Jonathan Glazer ("Sexy Beast," "Birth") is going for -- Johansson's character (no names are used) is curious about what it feels like to be human. It also struck me as being a sharp metaphor for a young woman's struggle with coming of age sexually, and the power and pitfalls surrounding that journey.

The set-up is a snore until our gal picks up a man with a deformed face, like that of the elephant man. She seems truly moved by his inexperience with human contact and is inspired to spare him. Does she identify with him?

This is all rendered in darkness and gloom. Johannson (or her body double) is naked a lot and pouty at times. Glazer uses artful techniques, using backlighting and mirrors. The final sequence is one of the most breathtaking final shots I've ever seen. So, if you wait for video so that you can fast-forward through this one, make sure to savor that wonder.

NOTE: We considered adding this one to the Patsies* -- inscrutable films that make you say to yourself, "That means nothing to me."


WHITE REINDEER (B+) - Husky-voiced Anna Margaret Hollyman steps up to a leading role as a woman who goes on a bender in the days leading up to Christmas after her husband is brutally murdered and she begins finding out some of his secrets.

Suzanne is a real estate agent whose perkiness takes a severe hit when tragedy strikes. Upon learning that her boyfriend was into black women -- in one of several awkward plot devices, one of the dead man's buddies fesses up about his affair with a stripper -- Suzanne seeks out the strip club. Soon she is doing lines of coke and shots at dance clubs with the wild women. She also plunges into retail therapy -- buying clothes and then a yard- and houseful of Christmas decorations.

Then the mysterious couple she sold a house to invites her to their X-rated housewarming, where Suzanne engages coolly in group sex. The nudity and sexual situations are not for the shy; the scene stands out, too, because it's narratively shaky.

Suzanne and stripper Fantasia grow close, and as the worst Christmas ever approaches, Suzanne finds comfort in female bonding while wondering why the man she married is such a mystery to her. Hollyman carries this whole thing well, even if the pacing jerks and jolts a bit and the dark humor stings. There's an element of absurdity to the whole proceedings (I blame C-list writer/director Zach Clark for sloppy work) but an underlying believability (thanks mainly to Hollyman) keeps it from flying off into farce.


* - From Patsy in "Absolutely Fabulous," having this exchange after arriving home post-dawn from a night of carousing:
Patsy: What time is it? 
Eddy: 7:30 [a.m.] 
Patsy: What? in the... 7:30, you say? That means nothing to me. 
Eddy: Go back to bed, darling. 

Life Is Short

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 and here.

This one was a gamble. "At Middleton" is a romantic comedy about two parents who meet-cute while taking their kids on a campus tour of a small private college. It's usually hard to go wrong with Vera Farmiga (and with her sister, Taissa, who plays her daughter); unless, of course, you ask her to do comedy, apparently. I was willing to sit back and gaze into her eyes for an hour and a half, but I just couldn't make it.

Throw in an equally un-comedic Andy Garcia -- here attempting to portray an uptight, bow-tied heart doctor ("heart," get it?) -- and a horrendous script by a couple of newcomers, and you've got truly painful viewing. 

Title: AT MIDDLETON
Running Time: 100 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull: 20 MIN
Portion Watched: 20%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 51 YRS, 5 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 81.2 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Watched "Silicon Valley" and "Veep" on HBO.
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 120-1.

Soundtrack of Your Life

An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems.  Today, a three-pack scoring low on the irony matrix, but satisfying as a group effort:

Date: 13 April 2014, 4:00 p.m.
Place: Midtown Sports and Wellness 
Song:  "Love and Happiness" (1991)
Artist: John Mellencamp
Irony Matrix: 3 out of 10
Comment: The gym was in a classic rock mood, apparently, burning through the '70s and '80s with a few tired classics. Then they sneaked into the '90s, when they were still earnest about videos, for this guilty pleasure chock full of chunky riffs.



Date: 13 April 2014, 4:15 p.m.
Place: Midtown Sports and Wellness 
Song: "20th Century Boy" (1973)
Artist: T-Rex
Irony Matrix: 3 out of 10
Comment: "Bang a Gong" at the gym, sure, but this one? Props. For indie cred, we present the Replacements version from the "Let It Be" sessions in the mid-'80s. Guitar swagger here is courtesy of the late, great Bob Stinson.




Date: 13 April 2014, 6:45 p.m. 
Place: Car, radio, Big Oldies 98.5 FM 
Song: "Jump Into the Fire" (1971)
Artist: Harry Nilsson
Irony Matrix: 2 out of 10
Comment: It's certainly not ironic at all to hear an oldie from a car stereo. This one blew me away as if it were recorded last year. (Of course, it was a track from the epic "Nilsson Schmilsson.") It sounds like proto-new-wave, totally Joe Jackson (Graham Maby bass lines and all). Doesn't it? This song played as part of a replay of the April 8, 1972, "American Top 40" countdown with Casey Kasem (airing at 6 o'clock Sundays). Nilsson came in at No. 32 that week, just two notches above T-Rex's "Bang a Gong," one behind "Precious and Few" and six behind Walter White's swan song, "Baby Blue" by Badfinger. It was chasing Nilsson's own grammy-winning "Without You," which was falling from No. 1, on its way to "dedication" purgatory. Dig the drum solo! Around 1974 and 1975, I was a dedicated 12-year-old listener of the AT40, faithfully transcribing the Top Ten each week; in the archives, I still have scraps of paper with the handwritten lists. Now, of course, they are all artfully codified online. This is a great "record," as they used to say. I probably had never heard it until last night. Everything old is new again.

Wes World

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (A-minus) - No one builds a fictional world like Wes Anderson does. Nothing is quite as intricate and intimate and fun.

Not quite as twee as the previews suggested, "Grand Budapest Hotel" brings a level of nostalgia and melancholy to Anderson's typical mannered zaniness with smarts and heart.

Here, he's crafted a pre-WWII Eastern Europe, before the Iron Curtain fell, with an eye for artistic detail like a religious zealot. It's his most fully realized environment and story line since the under-appreciated "Life Aquatic With Steve Zizou." You can truly get lost with him down this delightful rabbit hole and relish the magic of movie-making. The gorgeous pink hotel sits in establishing shots like a birthday cake atop a mountain, and every nook and cranny inside is meticulously rendered. It's the perfect jumping-off point for old-fashioned story spinning.

"Grand Budapest" is a caper film, about a dandy of a hotel concierge, M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), and his loyal lobby boy, Zero Moustafa (newcomer Tony Revolori), as they run from Nazi-era bad guys who are after a rare painting that Gustave inherited from one of the old ladies he beds, Madame D. (a shriveled Tilda Swinton). In Anderson's hands, Fiennes was simply born for this role, snapping off lines like a highlight reel. It's not unlike Gene Hackman as Anderson's classic creation, Royal Tenenbaum, a character that felt like the inevitable culmination of Hackman's career.

And no one makes Anderson dialogue sing like Jeff Goldblum, here savoring the role of legal minder Deputy Kovacs. The rest of the cast is loaded with a who's who of talented actors: Mathieu Amalric as a put-upon butler, Harvey Keitel as a shirtless, tattooed inmate, Willem Dafoe as a growling henchman, a giddy Edward Norton as a Zig Zag commander Henckels, Saoirse Ronan (with a Gorbachevian birthmark in the shape of Mexico on her right cheek) as the baker gal and Zero's love interest, Jason Schwartzman as a '60s-era concierge, Lea Seydoux as a meek maid, and Bill Murray and Bob Balaban in cameos as Gustave's cohorts in the Society of the Crossed Keys.

Many of the gags are subtle, even silly, and some have an extra layer of sweetness. After M. Gustave is ousted from the hotel, his replacement as concierge is named M. Chuck (and played by an oafish Owen Wilson). When Zero leaves a note to Agatha, he signs it "From Z to A." When one of the celebrated Mendl's cakes is smuggled into a prison cell, Gustave sets out to carve it into portions by requesting, not just a blade, but "the throat slitter." The choreography of inmates hacking away at the bars of a cell brings to mind both Ziegfeld and the Three Stooges.

What gives the film its heft is the narrative device. Tom Wilkinson starts telling the story as an author in the 1980s, and he flashes back to the Communist-era '60s when, as a young reporter (played by Jude Law), he ran into an older, grizzled version of lobby boy Zero (now played by F. Murray Abraham). The once-elegant hotel is now Khrushchev tacky, with a flat orange color scheme, mock mod stylings, and blunt signage everywhere. (It reminded me of Hotel Argentina in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in the 1990s; all that was missing was the clear plastic bubble phone booths.) It is depopulated and raggedy. Only Mendl's bouffant desserts have survived from the old days.

Moustafa spins his tale over dinner, taking us back to a time when, in Gustave's view, a civil, mannered society was coming to a coarse end. The '60s styles are depressing, and Moustafa is a lonely figure, still heartbroken over the loss of a beloved era that had seemed so rife with possibility, nobility and hope (even if, perhaps, it was false hope). It's as if a colorful 3-D world was popped like a balloon and we can never be that youthful and happy again. Or, it's tough to admit, maybe our recollections themselves are like a luscious, boxed Mendl's cake -- empty calories that trigger sugar-coated memories.

New to the Queue

A basket of juicy scripts:

Scarlett Johansson as an alien sexual predator in Glasgow, from "Sexy Beast" director Jonathan Glazer, "Under the Skin."

Jim Jarmusch directing Tilda Swinton -- any surprise it involves vampires? -- in "The Only Lovers Left Alive."

David Gordon Green (from "George Washington" to "Prince Avalanche") revives Nicolas Cage and recruits "Mud's" Tye Sheridan for the rough-and-tumble "Joe."

From the makers of 2006's "Manufactured Landscapes," a meditation on the limitations of our most precious natural resource, "Watermark."

A documentary about Germans of the last century seeking eden in South America, "The Galapagos Affair."

A feature film for Steve Coogan's beloved British TV character, "Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa."

One-Liners

OF TIME AND THE CITY (B-minus) - A quaint tone poem from the ever-nostalgic Terence Davies, this is more of a mix-tape or a home movie than a documentary that the masses can appreciate. Davies -- the auteur behind the nostalgic feature films "Distant Voices, Still Lives" and "The Deep Blue Sea" -- pens a valentine to his hometown of Liverpool, England.

Davies employs archival footage of the port town known mostly for battleships and the Beatles. His raspy voice provides the voiceover, which borders on the bombastic. He's partial to purple prose from deep thinkers over the centuries, such as this one from Carl Jung: "We meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it."

As you'd expect, this comes off as highly personal, as nostalgia-squared. It's so personal that it's not easy for the rest of us to appreciate Davies' intimate personal diary that's on display. He does shake things up by jumbling images and sounds. For instance, the start of World War II is heralded by the next-gen '60s classic from the Hollies, "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother."

This is an interesting curiosity that quickly fades into hazy memory.

THE HAPPY SAD (C-minus) - Bad acting, clunky direction and cheap sets doom this attempt at breaking down gender and sexual barriers.

In the opening scene, Amy (Sorel Carradine, Keith's daughter, yawn) and Stan (rocker Cameron Scoggins) break up during brunch. To somehow make it easier, she makes up a story about developing a recent crush on her friend Mandy and says she needs time to sort things out. Stan, it turns out, is bi-curious, and he soon finds himself in the apartment of a gay man who just agreed with his partner of six years to open up their relationship. Meantime, Amy's idea of making a move on Mandy veers toward reality.

The possibilities here are intriguing. The execution is completely botched. Director Rodney Evans (who has explored the gay black lifestyle previously) tries to convert a stage play by newcomer Ken Urban. Both come off as hacks here. The dialogue is stale; the plot is often simplistic; and the cast come off as amateurs.

There is one promising moment in the second half -- when Amy and Stan fall back into bed together, and she gets him to enunciate his gay fantasies -- where there's a glimmer of hope that this film might have something significant to offer. but the moment is fleeting. And the production limps to a bland ending.

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 super-hero flick:

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER (B+) - Comic-book movies are critic-proof, but that doesn't stop critics from trying. It doesn't stop fans from writing counter-reviews, either. Critics complain that movies like “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” are witless and boring. Fans say the critics are witless and boring.

Either side can have its way with this. Here we come down on the fans’ side. In between the explosions and relentless fistfights there is a plot that, admittedly heavy-handedly, is ripped from today’s headlines.

If you aren’t familiar with the “Marvel Universe” of superheroes and antiheroes, you might as well skip this unless you’re willing to watch all its predecessors, in order. If you do that, though, you should like “The Winter Soldier” if you can leave your high-mindedness at the theater door.

Look elsewhere for a plot summary. Suffice it to say that if a superhero movie can attract Robert Redford, it’s worth a look. It helps that Redford plays a bad guy, and plays it straight.

Comic gold

We return to THIS-TV, the best way to watch the following movie ...

PUNCHLINE (A-minus) - I'm a sucker for this somewhat sappy yuk-fest starring Tom Hanks as a medical school dropout doing killer stand-up at a New York dive club with a bunch of other wannabe stars, including Sally Field as a Roseanne-style housewife-comic. I used to watch it repeatedly back in the early '90s, when it seems like it aired once a month, always on Sunday night after the late news on the local ABC station in Chicago.

I know, that sounds almost depressing. But "Punchline" is smart and winning, and Hanks and Field have a delightful rapport. As Steven Gold, he is a skilled stand-up comedian, and Field (playing harried suburban mom Lilah Krytsick) is at the top of her game here.


Hanks was still fumbling his way to stardom, coming directly off of "Big," but spinning his wheels four years after "Splash" and still five years before "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Philadelphia." (He still had to spit out "Turner & Hooch" and "Joe vs. the Volcano" before Oscar was to come calling.) Here, he is still young and raw, and you can almost see his dramatic chops getting beefed up. He's bitingly funny throughout, but he also finds some depth as a man with an immature, snide streak; he's a cocky comic dealing with the shame of not living up to his father's expectations.

David Seltzer (the writer of "The Omen" and random fare like "Bird on a Wire") has a firm handle on the lifestyle and psyches of stand-up comedians. The supporting cast is appealing, including Damon Wayans and Taylor Negron as fellow stand-ups and Mark Rydell as the club emcee, Romeo. The winsome Kim Greist ("Brazil," TV's "Chicago Hope"), as a talent scout, is always welcome. And Goodman, in the same year as "Roseanne" debuted, plays snubbed middle-class hubby well.

There's plenty of stand-up here (one of the comics does his shtick dressed up in a nun's habit, a smirky nod to Field's early days), and the routines are believable -- some are good, some are bad, some just OK. Gold's location gig for hospital patients and staff, utilizing his two years of medical school as source material, is genuinely a hoot. Seltzer has created an authentic world that feels familiar. Gold, a natural, pushes Lilah to pursue her latent talent; Seltzer fumbles their relationship a bit, but it works in the end.

The film builds to a showdown at the club, as the top 10 comedians participate in a televised contest, with the winner getting a ticket to the big time. Gold's a lock to win, unless he melts down and blows it. Drama ensues as the votes are being tabulated and the comics wait nervously below stage, and Field tosses one of the best exit lines out over her shoulder, telling Romeo off in a perfectly low-key way.

This is charming, old-fashioned storytelling. It's a welcoming little world.

New to the Queue

The dark Romanian drama about a pushy mother, "Child's Pose."

A touching look at the twilight years of the old dame of Broadway/cabaret, "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me."

The engaging Middle East thriller, "Omar," from the director of "Paradise Now."

The smart high school comedy "Date and Switch."

The old saw about the eager young writer and the crusty old coot, Emma Roberts and John Cusack in "Adult World."

On the request of a friend, the Wim Wenders collaboration with Robert Redford, "Cathedrals of Culture."

A documentary about the futility of aid to Haiti, "Fatal Assistance."

A scathing examination of the juvenile justice system, "Kids for Cash."