Tres Hombres

Three larger-than-life figures out in the wild West:

ROAD TO PALOMA (C+) - Can a movie be worth it for its soundtrack? Because this buddy road flick across the California desert is essentially one long string of movie cliches, albeit a fairly entertaining one. And the music, led by husband-wife stompers Shovels & Rope is raw and compelling throughout, as if it were an additional character.

Hulky Jason Momoa ("Game of Thrones") is Wolf, a brooding native American who hits the road after exacting revenge on the man who killed his mother. He meets up with musician and drunk Cash (Robert Homer Mollohan) with a couple of federal agents on their tails. There is nothing here you haven't seen in other films -- a bareknuckled fistfight on a dusty Indian reservation, a wisecracking agent paired with a sadistic one, and borderline Indian stereotypes (with Wes Studi there to try to overcome them). This is a bizarre cross between -- stick with me here -- "Billy Jack," "Easy Rider," "True Detective" "Angel Heart" and "Red Shoes Diary."

I'll admit that the deciding factor for seeing this was the opportunity to glimpse Lisa Bonet for the first time in a while. She is married to Momoa, and they have two kids, and their several scenes together as reunited lovers come off as vanity noodling, with embarrassing improv moments tossed in. You have to wonder why they would want us to watch them make love in a tastefully lighted trailer; it's like a boring sex tape spliced into the middle of the film. (Lisa, by the way, in her dreads and cowboy boots, looks lovely.)

Yet ... this movie stuck with me. Momoa makes his directing debut, as does cinematographer Brian Andrew Mendoza, and while they overdo the soft-focus nature shots, they manage to find genuine grit and beauty in that California desert. The result is borderline amateurish, but their hearts are in this, and I was reeled in until the end.

The soundtrack is available for download at Tunes and on disc at CDBaby. It also includes contributions from Griffin Young, Radio Birds, the Treasures, Molly Gunner and Diamond Light. Here's the song that plays over the credits. It's by Mackenzie DeWolfe Howe, "When I Go":




SPARK: A BURNING MAN STORY (C) - Disappointingly, this documentary is more about the process of putting on the annual dropout spectacle in the Nevada desert than it is about the event itself. And that means it's about a bunch of grey-haired hippies clinging to the idea of a counterculture movement that sold out long ago. (Not a bad encapsulation of the entire Boomer life experience over the past 50 years.) Or, worse, its a bunch of scenes of performance artists whining about how difficult their work is and how impossible their deadlines are. Ugh.

Who would want to watch the production crew sit around a table and brainstorm? The talking heads are not very interesting, except for the crotchety set supervisor who goes by the name Otto Von Danger. The questions of whether the founders have sold out get glossed over. When the movie finally gets around to showing some scenes from Burning Man we get the most banal, PG images you can imagine. Is that all there is?

Sometime mid 1990s, I vividly recall reading a Spin magazine centerpiece about the event and was smitten. By then in my early 30s and between marriages, I ached to be the type of bon vivant who would go off and disappear in the desert for a week and commune with next-gen hippies. It's one of the what-ifs of my life. A friend went a couple of years ago and was quite underwhelmed. Would things have been different 20 years ago? This movie doesn't begin to provide a hint.

A NIGHT IN OLD MEXICO (D+) - Let's hope Robert Duvall (age 83) makes another movie before he retires; it would be a shame if this clunker were his swan song. It's a dull tale of an old codger getting kicked off his land and, after a surprise visit from his grandson, goes on a bender across the border.

This is what Disney might have come up with in the late '60s if the censors would let them include a hooker with a heart of gold. (Here, poor Angie Cepeda gets the short straw, saddled with the name Patty Wafers for good measure.) Unmemorable 20-something Jeremy Irvine plays the apple-cheeked grandson, the offspring of Red's ne'er-do-well kid Jimmy.

Would you believe that, on the way to Mexico, ol' Red and wide-eyed Gally pick up a couple of hitchhikers, then ditch them, only to find some drug stash still in the backseat? And would you believe that them fellers are after Red and Gally for the rest of the movie? And would you believe that sweet Patty Wafers takes a might shine to ol' Red? No, I wouldn't believe any of that, either.

The cinematography is inordinately bright and crisp for a nocturnal foray into an underworld south of the border, a major indication that the production team was tone deaf all around. Duvall mumbles and grumbles and hams it up until you feel bad for him. I don't know why I didn't shut it off, but instead it just droned on to its inevitable happy ending.

BONUS TRACK
One more from "Paloma" -- this is Shovels & Rope with "Hell's Bells":