Still in Saigon

LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM (B) - On the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, we examine Rory Kennedy's remembrance of the ugly American exit from South Vietnam.

This is a well-curated PBS documentary (it's streaming at the "American Experience" page) that excels in that paint-by-numbers format. The second half of the film, which zeroes in those final days as the communists surged toward the South's capital, is a sensational recounting of the mayhem of the evacuation of Americans and sympathetic South Vietnamese.

A smart mix of talking heads includes former CIA and State Department officials, Marines and soldiers, and Vietnamese migrants who survived the ordeal, one of whom spent 15 years doing hard labor in a re-education camp. We get a good chunk of news clips from the era, including era interviews with the ambassador who seemed slow to act at first but later insisted on being one of the last ones out as he sought to rescue as many South Vietnamese as possible (among them, the embassy cook and the local tailor).

Kennedy (born six months after dad RFK's assassination) spends an inordinate amount of time up front setting in place the run-up to April 1975, two years after the Paris accords ostensibly ended the war and gave the United States peace with honor. But at the halfway point, a switch flips, and we are embedded in the events of the final days and, eventually, the final harrowing hours. First-person accounts -- including from the last U.S. military personnel to be airlifted out -- narrate the on-the-ground footage by news organizations that captured the evacuation in incredible detail.

In that way, "Last Days" plays like a riveting page-turner. The randomness of who will make it past the embassy gates and onto one of the flights to a Navy ship or to the Philippines is the raw stuff of human drama.

The details are fascinating. Would-be refugees gathered around the embassy pool. Marines and soldiers frisked each person and tossed weapons and ammunition into the pool. Witnesses describe a mother hanging out of a helicopter and dropping her baby into the arms of a Marine. A valiant water-landing by a South Vietnamese pilot is the stuff of suspense dramas.

Kennedy creates a microcosm of the war itself. Good intentions, honorable efforts, but a hellish clusterfuck destined to end badly. Watching the way we struggled to exit, a pregnant question hangs in the air: Why did we get sucked into that place to begin with?
 

Hitting the Links

Stuff we like on the Web ...

We caught Waxahatchee (with Girlpool) at Sister Bar in Albuquerque on Friday night, as the Philadelphia scene came to us on the eve of our trip to Philly. Katie Crutchfield and her tight band blazed through an eye-opening 45-minute set, coming off poised and cocky. They added juice to new material, and Crutchfield had the swagger of a rock star on the rise. Meantime, the guitar duo Girlpool could have shown a bit more diversity in their song melodies, but they delivered smart lyrics with sharp harmonies. Both bands owe a debt to the Pixies and the Breeders. God bless the next-gen Daughters of Deal.

***

Two nights later, near downtown Philadelphia, the retro power trio Ex Hex tore it up at Urban Transfer. Led by the sharp riffs and engaging vocals of Mary Timony, the D.C. band ripped through three songs in the first eight minutes and then took it up a few more notches. This was a revelation beyond their cheesy videos of studio cuts available online. Timony (ex of Helium and Wild Flag) is a nimble and muscular lead guitarist. For Timony's solos, bassist Betsy Wright would meet her at center stage, face to face (in sparkly mini-dresses), powering each other on, while drummer Laura Harris propelled the songs. Wright knocked out her own slamming solo during another song.

Their influences tend to have roots in '70s power pop. One song stole the "Baba O'Reilly" guitar riff. At other times I heard echoes of Sweet or Elastica. These are three impressive veteran musicians blasting irresistible pop songs. Here's a good profile from the Washington Post. Song sample below.

***

It's been seven hours and 25 years since Sinead O'Connor released Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U" and hit the top of the charts for four weeks. Atlantic has an appreciation of the song and O'Connor's emotional wallop here. The classic tear-streaked video is included in the story and embedded below for your wallowing.

***

On the  movie front, Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski holds a regular movie night for court staff, lawyers and the public at the courthouse. It started when he screened "12 Angry Men" for his young law clerks. The most recent screening was of "Tim's Vermeer," which we passed on. The LA Times has a fine feature story here.

BONUS TRACKS

"Nothing -- I said nothing -- can take away these blues":



Waxahatchee, two years ago at NPR's showcase at South by Southwest in Austin:



... and the the trippy opening track from the band's new album, "Ivy Tripp":




Here's Ex Hex live on KEXP in Seattle:



Finally, props to the shuttle driver from Philadelphia International spinning some old-school reggae-dub, including this gem from the Blenders:

One-Liners: Veterans

A couple of old pros fumble around in middle age:

THE DROP (B-minus) - This is Brooklyn Catholic macho bunk, but it gets under your skin.

Beware of the pedigree here. Writer Dennis Lehane (adapting his story "Animal Rescue") shoved this symbolism down our throats a decade ago with the bloated "Mystic River" and "Gone Baby Gone." And director Michael Roskam previously laid the thuggishness on thick with "Bullhead" a couple of years ago. Ladle on the symbolism -- we actually get a little ceramic angel with a broken wing that needs fixing, to go along with a vulnerable puppy -- and it's like 15 rounds of Scorsese vs. Ferrara.

We don't need another mumbling, bumbling heist movie, but a strong cast and a powerful mood put this over the top. Cousins Marv (James Gandolfini) and Bob (Tom Hardy) used to be up-and-comers in the underworld but they lost a showdown and now run a bar that's a front for Chechen mobsters who use it as a money drop to launder cash. Both Marv and Bob seems to be working their own angles. And Bob is menaced by the unhinged Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts, who starred in "Bullhead") now that Bob has Eric's dog and girlfriend (a still-struggling Noomi Rapace, formerly of the Dragon Tattoo).

It seems as if everyone has a score to settle or a scar to explain, and nobody can trust nobody. The menace builds, and it's not just the cute pitbull who seems to be in perpetual peril. This is the kind of gritty drama in which a working stiff tells a nosy cop not to mess with his neighborhood bar. (To catch all the dialogue, peppered with mumbles and accents, turn on the subtitles.)

Hardy carries the film (like he did in "Locke"), giving Bob a mix of guile and dimwittedness. This noble-simpleton role used to go to Eric Roberts ("They took my thumbs, Charlie!") or, in a perfect world, Richard Edson. Gandolfini is fine, but he's pretty much playing Tony Soprano's sad-sack alter-ego, rocking a Jets beer cozy instead of an Escalade. Schoenaerts is effectively intimidating. And a smooth John Ortiz (the love interest in HBO's "Togetherness") fills in the gaps as a snoopy NYPD Columbo. Rapace still hasn't recovered from Brian DePalma's "Passion," but she doesn't embarrass herself, either.

Wither simple Bob and his puppy? Roskam and Lehane deliver a powerful climax, ending and coda. You might feel compelled to shower off the stink of Red Bull and hair gel after this, but the hour-45 isn't a bad way to spend a night in the 'hood.

THE HUMBLING (B) - Greta Gerwig is a wonder. A couple of hours with her is never a waste of time.

Here she bucks up Al Pacino, sleepwalking with charm through his role as Simon Axler, a fading actor who is losing not only his professional skills but perhaps his mind. And his libido has seen better days, too. Which doesn't stop 30-something Pegeen (Gerwig) from suspending her 15-year experimentation with lesbianism to seduce Simon, a longtime friend of her parents (the entertaining Dianne Wiest and Dan Hedaya) and a man twice her age.

This has an anachronistic creak to it -- the old man banging the woman half his age -- courtesy of wistful writer Buck Henry (interpreting a Philip Roth novel with a young woman, newcomer Michal Zebede, as co-writer) and veteran nostalgist Barry Levinson ("Diner," etal.) behind the camera. Charles Grodin also brings a 1970s vibe as Simon's hectoring agent (offering him either King Lear or a $150,000 payday for a hair-restoration commercial). They capture the distress of an old man fumbling to get by in a new era.

Simon, in his last performance, dove face-first off the stage (in one of several parallels to "Birdman") and, after a stint in a psych ward, he now finds himself shuffling around an old country house and Skyping with his therapist (Dylan Baker) until Pegeen pops over and pumps him full of life again. Meantime, a cohort from the psych ward, the ominously named Sybil (a delightful Nina Arianda) hounds him with an offer of cash to kill her child-abusing husband.

Characters flit in and out, and as the movie unfolds, it becomes more and more difficult to tell what's really happening and what's a figment of Simon's imagination. Despite the somnambulism, Pacino as an actor seems more engaged and alive than he has in quite a while. The supporting cast energizes him. He has memorable confrontations with Arianda, Grodin and Wiest and, in the film's climax, a searing knock-down/drag-out with Gerwig, which itself is worth the price of admission.

Levinson, meanwhile, keeps things rolling. His shots of Pegeen swimming at night in a heated pool in winter, steam billowing as Simon looks on like a wounded puppy, is magical. Gerwig is doing a variation on her aimless 20-somethings from "Frances Ha" and "Greenberg," as if that young woman has matured and deepened emotionally. It's such a pleasure watching the best actress of her generation go off exploring.

The Last Schmaltz

DANNY COLLINS (B+) - An engaging cast rescues this heartfelt comic drama before it pegs into the Hallmark zone. It's clever and touching in turns.

What you see is what you get: Al Pacino plays an aging superstar (a little bit Neil Diamond, Billy Joel and Leonard Cohen) who just runs through the hits onstage for the old ladies in his audience and hasn't written a song in 30 years. Turns out Danny told an interviewer in 1971 that he feared that success might change him. This caught the attention of John Lennon, who responded by penning a letter to Danny (phone number at the Dakota included), signed "Love, John & Yoko," and sending it to the magazine, where it sat in limbo for decades. (This really happened to a singer named Steve Tilston.)

Here's where the Hollywood kicks in, courtesy of Dan Fogelman (writer of "Crazy Stupid Love" and Cars," making his directorial debut and laying it on thick). When his manager, Frank (Christopher Plummer), finds the letter online, buys it and gives it to him as a birthday gift, it shakes up Danny, who vows to change his life. He quits his lucrative tour and holes up in a hotel in New Jersey, not far from the grown son he has never known (the product of a one-night stand with a groupie).

Pacino portrays the scarf-sporting Danny as perpetually dancing along the fine line between charm and smarm. Danny ditches the model-pretty girlfriend half his age and instead flirts with the more age-appropriate manager of the hotel, Mary (Annette Bening). He also shmoozes the aw-shucks yokel millennials who work at the hotel. He has a $30,000 Steinway rolled into his modest hotel room and sets about penning a new song.

Danny barges in on the row-house bliss of his son, Tom (Bobby Cannavale), and pregnant wife Samantha (Jennifer Garner) and precocious 7-year-old hyperactive daughter Sophie (a delightfully manic Catarina Cas). Tom is a blue-collar noble who has never accepted a penny from his famous dad. But he's got a secret that serves as the major plot fulcrum that just might bring him and his father closer. Meantime, Danny starts showering the family with his rock-star riches and preparing to unveil the reinvented singer/songwriter.

Pacino goes all-in here, digging around for at least the appearance of emotional depth to go along with the banter. Danny pleasantly hounds Mary for a dinner date, and you don't mind that the "patter" between them barely disguises the dueling between two fine actors. (This is sort of Bening's Annie Hall.) Pacino/Danny finds an engaging rapport with everyone around him, and he makes the film sail along briskly.

The supporting crew is strong. Cannavale and Garner salvage uncomfortable roles. The secret weapons are Nick Offerman, in a cameo during an opening flashback scene, and Plummer as the sardonic manager and best pal, providing wisdom and one-liners. And the soundtrack is awash in original Lennon songs, and not just obvious choices like "Imagine," but nuggets like "Love" and "Nobody Told Me."

This is fluff that could be easily dismissed. And it sure gets corny as hell at times, especially as Fogelman clumsily syncs his themes into a fairly tidy (but believable) ending. But there's something genuine here -- not just the origin story, but also the heart and grit that everyone involved invests in the production.

I laughed, I cried. I totally fell for it.

Dream Girls

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (C) - I'm being generous with the grade here because I feel guilty about sleeping through portions of this movie, yet another inside-baseball drama about a middle-age actor at a crossroads.

The wonderful Juliette Binoche struggles here as Maria Enders, who is asked to return to the stage in a play that made her famous -- but this time in the role of victim, the boss of an aggressive younger
employee. To prepare for the role, Maria hides out in the Alps and runs through endless line-readings with her young assistant, Valentine (Kristen Stewart), and we're supposed to be fascinated by the blurring between their real banter and the scripted exchanges. Late in the film, a bratty young actress in the mold of Lindsay Lohan or Amanda Bynes (Chloe Grace Moretz) shows up as Maria's co-star.

Olivier Assayas ("Carlos," "Irma Vep") dotes on the trappings of wealth and privilege, to the point of fetishizing Maria's lifestyle. The director lavishes so much attention on the scenery that he doesn't notice his cast flailing. Binoche delivers embarrassing fake laughs; Stewart (good in indies like "Adventureland") adjusts her eyeglass frames, runs a hand through her mane, and pouts a lot; Moretz (fine in "Laggies") cycles through several octaves of shrill, unconvincingly.

The lines from the play are alternatively dull and laughable. It's a tale of lesbian intrigue, and we're meant to find all kinds of overtones in the pas-de-deux between Maria and Valentine. But it's all glazed with a Zalman King cable-TV sheen -- casual touches, or a glimpse of Valentine sleeping in a thong, from Maria's point of view. A serious misstep by a talented director.

And I know we're in a new era where real-life folks check their phones a lot, but I'm not eager to watch characters do it constantly throughout a film. Skyping too. Yawn. Literally.

I struggled to find a good opening here. But I could not find anything worth staying awake for.

New to the Queue

Warming up ...

The long-overdue American release of one of our favorites, Tsai Ming-liang, the 1993 buddy movie "Rebels of the Neon God."

The delayed debut from Asghar Farhadi (perfect with "A Separation" and "The Past"), about a woman who disappears while on vacation, 2009's "About Elly."

Juliette Binoche (as yet another actor having a midlife crisis) and Kristen Stewart (as her gal friday) in the latest from Olivier Assayas ("Carlos," "Summer Hours," "Irma Vep"), "Clouds of Sils Maria."

Dare we wade into the sci-if realm with another cyborg hottie? We are drawn to "Ex Machina."

Wilding

WILD TALES (A-minus) - This 2014 hit from Argentina, recently released in North America, will likely end up being the most fun I have in a movie theater in 2015. Writer/director Damian Szifron confidently serves up a pastiche of six stories -- in the classic vein of "Twilight Zone: The Movie" and "Love: American Style" -- each with an O. Henry darkness and a violent ending. It's pure escapist entertainment.

The viewer is served notice before the opening credits roll, with the first vignette, in which the passengers of an airplane slowly realize they all have something in common, which (in an eerie prediction of a recent actual news event) will lead to their doom. The wildest entry involves two men dueling through an ever-escalating battle of road rage. Several clever twists ratchet the tension, and Szifron teaches a valuable lesson: Let things go. Don't reverse course and go back to get the last word or lick in. Drive on. The alternative is an ugly, fiery blast into an ironic eternity.

Speaking of explosions, Ricardo Darin stands out as Simon (a.k.a. Bombito), a munitions expert who seeks revenge on the bureaucratic system after his car keeps getting towed. Darin was memorable in "Nine Queens" and "The Secret in Their Eyes," and here he lends his hangdog emotions and wry smile to the outrage of an everyman tired of taking lumps from everyday life. Other tales involve a diner cook hellbent on avenging a mobster's actions against the family of the diner's waitress, who is a reticent accomplice; and a rich family seeking to buy their way out of their teen son's fatal hit-and-run accident by paying their handyman to take the fall and by greasing the wheels of justice with cash (a variation on Nuri Bilge Ceylan's "Three Monkeys" from 2008).

Szifron can do no wrong as he glides from story to story. He is confident and technically adept while spinning these fascinating tales. He some how builds momentum despite having to restart his narrative every 20 minutes or so. It helps that he has assembled a top-notch cast to zip things along.

The filmmaker saves one of his best for last, the tale of a wedding that turns into a knock-down/drag-out spectacle after the bride suspects the groom of having cheated on her. Like with the road-rage chapter, this one melds slapstick with doom, with hints of Three Stooges and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

Old-fashioned in presentation and traditional in its storytelling, this improbable whoosh of fresh air plays like a modern serial, with a vigorous new voice to splash it on the big screen. A delight.

That '70s Drift: Iron Curtain Sci-Fi

Inspired by last August's film series in New York, "Strange Lands: International Sci-Fi," we assembled a bunch of those titles and had our own mini film fest over the past few weeks: 

IN THE DUST OF OUR STARS (1976) (C+) -  The good folks of the planet Cynro respond to a distress call from those on the planet Tema 4.  But when they get there, they're told it was a false alarm.  So everyone attends a swingin' party.

But the Cynro navigator Suko (Alfred Struwe) is suspicious and skips the festivities, where drinking and flirting mixes with a little laser-beam mind control on the visitors. Suko decides to go exploring, and he finds the dirty secret in one of Tema 4's underground mines. Suddenly the rescue mission is back on -- unless the Cynrovians decide instead to avoid conflict and fly back home.

Suko's love interest is Akala, played by Jana Brechova, who apparently was East Germany's version of Angie Dickinson in the '70s. The mostly female crew is peopled by various Germanic beauties, one of whom showers for gratuitous reasons and performs a sexy silhouette dance. Elsewhere, we get other dancing pixies, snakes, and a weird hall of scary heads.

It's all rather trippy, and the futuristic devices are appropriately cheesy. But it's not any more imaginative than an episode of "Star Trek" or "Lost in Space." It is, however, an unsubtle Cold War parable about advanced nations' duties to subjugated cultures.

THE 10th VICTIM (1965) (B-minus) - Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress star as dueling assassins in this mid-'60s satire about the government's solution to the population explosion: legalized murder.

Set in the near future, with a global truce in place, nations instead allow the more violent people to engage in the Big Hunt, a "Hunger Games"-like exhibition of hunter vs. assassin. Survive 10 rounds (five as hunter, five as hunted) and you retire to universal acclaim in your homeland.

Caroline Meredith (Andress) is after her 10th victim, Marcello Poletti (Mastroianni), a suave stud who suspects Caroline is his opponent. He hesitates to take her out before she offs him, because if a would-be victim guns down the wrong hunter, he or she goes to prison for 30 years. Caroline takes her time setting up her prey, seeking to maximize the financial gain from the hit by turning it into an ad for Ming Tea.

As both of them plot, they also fall in love (or lust). Both stars are magnetic, oozing appeal at the peak of their celebrity power.

Director Elio Petri has fun choreographing random street gun violence. He takes a rather silly plot -- really, why doesn't either Caroline or Marcello get it over with early on? -- and imbues it with depth and even a bit of suspense. This is classic mid-'60s mod fun.

EOLOMEA (1972) (C-minus) -  An overly chatty, plodding space tale never finds its momentum. Wikipedia has an efficient plot summary:

Eight spaceships disappear and radio contact to the enormous space station "Margot" is broken off. Professor Maria Scholl and the high council decree a flight ban for all other spaceships. Nevertheless one ship succeeds in leaving earth. The cause of all these strange events is the mysterious signals in Morse code coming to earth from the constellation Cygnus. Deciphered, they say the word "Eolomea," which seems to refer to a planet. With Captain Daniel Lagny, an unmotivated eccentric, Maria Scholl undertakes the risky journey to the space station "Margot" to uncover the secret, only to discover that a secretly planned expedition of stolen spaceships is leaving for Eolomea against the will of the government.

Nordic beauty Cox Habbema, as Prof. Scholl, lends both eye candy and gravitas. Capt. Lagny (Ivan Andonov) is pretty much one big mope. The dialogue is cumbersome, weighed down in constant exposition. The attempt at "2001"-level profundity falls flat.

UNAVAILABLE FOR RENTAL
THE END OF AUGUST AT THE HOTEL OZONE (Czechoslovakia, 1967) - A troupe of young women on post-apocalyptic earth are led around by a mistress born before the war, eventually stumbling into the company of a lonely old man.

I'm Not Following

IT FOLLOWS (C) - Numbed by the eight or nine previews of impending horror movies at the cineplex, including two pointless remakes (the CGI'ing of the '80s continues), I had a sinking feeling inside: Why did I come to a horror film? I'd had luck a few months ago with "The Babadook." Alas, my lucky streak ended at one.

"It Follows" comes from writer/director David Robert Mitchell, who wowed us last time out with his 2011 debut "The Myth of the American Sleepover." This one is more of an American Sleepwalker. It follows a group of apparent college-age young adults (though they look and act like high school sophomores) in a variation on the classic "Halloween" theme of "You fuck, you die," wherein individuals are haunted by ghoulish figures who follow them around, and the only way to get rid of them is to have sex with someone else, thereby transferring it to them like a venereal disease. If they don't then have sex with another and pass it on and are instead killed by the freakazoids, then the plague returns to you.

That sounds like the shell of an idea for a movie. Needs salt, or something. And this whole film plays out hollowly and somnambulistically, with cute blond Jay (Maika Monroe) moping around with her pals after losing a game of Tag, You're It in the backseat of some scruffy dude's old car. She likes to float in a backyard pool, where (apparent) actual neighbor boys like to spy on her. Her friends help her fight off the occasional zombie attack. Then the whole thing comes to a climax in a big public swimming pool, for some reason. (If you are ever plagued by the living dead, try something stronger than a toaster.)

The movie crawwwwls at 100 minutes; it probably would make a fine 20-minute short film. It also seems to be set in the past, but that's not clear. The cars are ancient (a station wagon!), the TVs are fat, and the leg-warmers have Froot-Loop stripes. No one has a cell phone. However, one character has a compact-sized clam-shell device on which she reads Dostoevsky. It's all rather annoying.

No one in the cast stands out, including Monroe, who struggles to carry Jamie Lee Curtis' water. Keir Gilchrist plays nerdy Paul, who pines for Jay but also once kissed (scandal!) her sister, Kelly (Lili Sepe). Gilchrist was delightful in "It's Kind of a Funny Story" a few years ago, but here, like everyone around him (including the undead), he's stumbling along trying to find any kind of story.

My best guess at what Mitchell is going for here: The story is set in suburban Detroit, and the kids mention at one point that more than one set of parents warned them about going into the city. Mitchell's camera lingers over the blight of Detroit, at times luridly. Is this about payback for white flight? Is it merely a weak metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases? In any event, pick up the pace, people.

Holy Crap!* "White God"

A revenge flick to end all revenge flicks, this mega genre mashup is a spectacle in every sense of the word. Yet it is also an old-fashioned heartbreaking tale of a girl and her dog, separated but hopeful of one day reuniting.

Her parents divorced, pouty adolescent Lili (Zsofia Psotta) gets dumped in the care of her dad while her mom bounds off to Australia for a three-month adventure. After a neighbor calls Animal Services on Lili's dog, Dad, like most fathers from rural Montana or behind the Iron Curtain, ditches the dog on the street, to the horror of Lili.

Thus begins the adventure of Hagen the dog, who will cycle through familiar horrors out on his own, including, predictably, a dog-fighting ring. The scenes of Hagen alternate with scenes of Lili, whose main gigs are playing trumpet in the school band and navigating the pitfalls of growing up. As Hagen is turned into a killing machine, Lili is hardened, too, at the hands of her bitter father and overbearing music teacher.

Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo exhibits masterful control of a wild story (sometimes involving the choreography of more than a hundred dogs at a time), propelling the narrative forward while gobbling up and spitting out ideas from the history of movies. These are the predecessors that his spectacle brought to mind:

"Benji." "Planet of the Apes." "Rocky." "Rambo." "Amores Perros." "Starsky & Hutch." "101 Dalmatians." "Mad Max." "I Am Legend." "My So-Called Life." "Whiplash." "Ratatouille." "Cinderella." "The Great Escape." "The Wizard of Oz." "The Terminator." "West Side Story." "Lassie." "The Birds."

It's a swirling homage to nearly every genre you can imagine. As Mundruczo spins more and more plates, it's amazing that not one falls and shatters.

Psotta is a heart-tugger, swooning after an older boy, and finding tender notes from her trumpet. Hagen (played by a pair of mixed-breeds) displays incredible acting chops. In his early days on the streets he befriends a smaller Jack Russell like the one from "The Artist," and they bound about like buddy cops or mischievous hoodlums. When Hagen descends into the horrors of the dog-fighting world, it's really too much to take as a viewer. About a half hour into the film I considered bailing out (I couldn't fast-forward like I did with "Amores Perros"); but once the film emerges from that maelstrom, it rockets forward, challenging you to keep up.

Suddenly it's a revenge allegory, as Hagen meets up with a growing pack of wild dogs. There is a grand escape from a pound. Bad guys pay for their sins. Tension builds and blood spills, and all the while we hold out hope that Lili and Hagen will be reunited. Except that we're afraid he'll tear her (or her father) to shreds.

When they finally do meet up, it's magic -- with a touch of magical realism.With a spell-binding final shot that will freeze you in your seat.

At the end, my initial fears of regretting these two hours were an ancient memory, replaced by joy and wonder. What has Mundruczo pulled off here? A measured delirium. It is, in turns, funny, and touching, and odd, and disturbing. It's nearly impossible to convey in words how this improbable story comes together like a simple story and an epic saga.

GRADE: A-minus

* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here and here and here and here and here. 

Doc Watch: Disruption

1971 (B) - This debut film from director Johanna Hamilton is a sweet homage to the eight unspectacular folks who broke into FBI headquarters in Media, Pa., in March 1971 -- and got away with it. Now their secret is out.

Hamilton relies heavily on re-enactments, and I was rolling my eyes early in the film. (Either do a feature film or a documentary, but not both, please.) But in the end, the tactic works. (She does a surprisingly good job of matching faces.) It's hard not to get swept up in the narrative and the era. The group chose the night of the first Ali-Frazier heavyweight bout to conduct their raid, because they figured most people would be distracted.* The documents -- shared with congressmen and news organizations -- revealed the FBI's extensive domestic campaign of surveillance and disruption, mainly through COINTELPRO. The leak is credited with eventually leading to a congressional investigation into both the FBI and CIA.

The real folks, mostly in their 60s now, show up to finally break their silence, or at least most of them do. They called themselves at the time the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI. Keith Forsyth, the technical expert, still has a strong mischievous glint in his eyes. We get glimpses of Bill Davidon, the physics professor and antiwar agitator who was their leader, before his death in 2013. John and Bonnie Raines look like your average all-American grandparents. Bob Williamson maintains his hangdog look and sharp tongue. (He and Forsyth were later part of the Camden 28, a group acquitted of destroying Draft Board documents in New Jersey.)

The clear message here is this: By banding together in a small, tight group, ordinary citizens can engage in civil disobedience and effect great change. As Bonnie Raines acknowledges near the end of the film, she and her husband soon went back to a quiet life raising their children; they figured that they had done their small part for the cause of a free democracy.

* - The haze of nostalgia on display here feels warm but it distracts at times. Forsyth claims that while he was picking the lock on the door of the offices that night, the security guard was watching the prize fight and that the sounds of the TV announcers were audible. Reliable reports say the fight was shown only at closed-circuit locations; perhaps it was a radio broadcast he heard. It's a petty complaint. The Media 8 surely earned the right to embellish their tale a bit in their twilight years.

GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF (B) - The prolific Alex Gibney trains his skepticism on Scientology in this solid but not necessarily groundbreaking HBO documentary.

The two-hour film (airing on HBO) is chock-full of bizarre tidbits about Scientology that most viewers will find creepy, including the entire L. Ron Hubbard backstory. Gibney, however, refuses to go for the knockout punch. He doesn't necessarily pull his punches; he just doesn't go for the throat. For instance, he ignores the controversy surrounding the apparent disappearance of the wife of David Miscavige, the cult's leader the past three decades since Hubbard's death.

Instead, he spends an inordinate amount of time on Scientology's two superstars, John Travolta and Tom Cruise. The former comes off fairly sympathetically; the suggestion is that he is being blackmailed by the leaders who hold tapes full of intimate revelations. The latter is one bizarre human being, if in fact he is human.

The tales of harassed ex-members, enslaved workers, and cheesy rallies is often quite compelling. Former members speak out and hold court as anchor talking heads. Gibney paces each of their reveals nicely, using their own personal exit stories as a way to build to his climax. The technique keeps you tuned in to the end.

One final nitpick: The word graphics are minute and at times impossible to read without 20/16 vision. I would have needed to have my nose pressed against my modest 32-inch screen to read it all.

BONUS TRACK
SINATRA: ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL (C+) - Gibney (we told you he's prolific) got HBO to lavish four hours on Frank Sinatra to mark the centennial of his birth. It ain't exactly Scorsese on Dylan. Oddly, we see none of the talking heads; instead we get only the voices, with his kids doing most of the narration. (Nancy's pieces sound as if they are lifted from an audio book.) The vintage footage is engaging at times, as it hints at the Beta Beatlemania that Frank sparked in the '40s and later takes a fascinating detour into the Mia Farrow affair. In the end, though, Sinatra is just not that interesting a guy, and Gibney glosses over his brutishness and mob ties. It is fun to hear about how few copies he sold of his 1969 bomb "Watertown" (it failed to crack the top 100), prompting his brief retirement before Ol' Blue Eyes came back in the early '70s. This is a cut-and-paste job that fails to justify its length. (Gibney did a better job with last year's HBO doc "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown.")

BONUS BONUS TRACK
I got a library copy of Bob Dylan's "Shadows in the Night," in which he digs deep into the Sinatra catalog for an album of standards. Holy crap. What doesn't make you wince will probably make you guffaw. Dylan has been horsing around the edge of the shallow end of the pool for a decade and a half now, but this time he's gone off the deep end.

New to the Queue

Spring thaw ...

Following up our 2013 favorite "Frances Ha," Noah Baumbach pits Xers vs. Millennials, via a strong cast, for "While We're Young."

The prolific Alex Gibney with a typical scattershot takedown, this time of Scientology, in "Going Clear."

A horror film in the classic teen mode, from the director of "The  Myth of the American Sleepover," "It Follows."

We're suckers for documentaries about boomer session musicians and backup singers, so we'll check out "The Wrecking Crew."

A young man feels overwhelmed by the process of moving out to the suburbs with wife and child, under the scrutiny of her father, in the feature debut "Please Be Normal."

A thriller of a love triangle from Brazil, a feature debut, "A Wolf at the Door."

The latest from animation auteur Bill Plympton, "Cheatin'."

A documentary about the men behind the Who, "Lambert & Stamp."

Workers fight for their rights at a restaurant in New York, in the documentary "The Hand That Feeds."
 

Doc Watch: Old Ways

HOLBROOK/TWAIN: AN AMERICAN ODYSSEY (B) -  This is a surprisingly fond and tender tribute to the old-world traditions of the theater. Here we tag along with Hal Holbrook, who just turned 90, on a recent tour of his one-man show about Mark Twain that he's been performing for six decades.

Lusciously photographed in black-and-white by Scott Teems (who directed Holbrook in "That Evening Sun"), "Odyssey" celebrates both Holbrook and Twain as American treasures. Holbrook opens up quite a bit -- not surprising for an elderly actor -- about not only his craft but also his personal life. We get the requisite reckoning with his neglected children, plus particularly poignant recollections of his last wife, the actress Dixie Carter, the memory of whom makes Holbrook mist up as he can't help comparing their teamwork to that of Huck and Jim from Twain's landmark novel.

Teems dwells a bit too long in the second half on Holbrook's tales of his tours of the South during the civil rights era, but the extended segment is not without its payoff. Celebrities, including Annie Potts and a smug (what else?) Sean Penn don't add much to the proceedings. Teems is generous with excerpts from not only the recent stage performance but archived clips, including the 1967 Emmy-winning TV special.

What does stick are the intimate details of Holbrook's backstage life and the intricacies of the simple production, including interactions with his support crew. Holbrook is meticulous with his notes from each performance, stretching back decades, intent on not repeating his material in each town he visits.

But it's the images, lovingly captured that make this otherwise routine documentary a little special. You see an octogenarian put on his fat suit and Twain pants, as he soldiers along on his life's mission. There's an authenticity to it that seems to have gone out of style.

LITTLE WHITE LIE (C+) - Running about an hour, this biographical tale of a Jewish woman investigating her never-acknowledged black roots feels undercooked but almost right for a TV time slot. (It is airing and streaming on PBS.)

Lacey Schwartz had a middle-class Jewish upbringing, bat mitzvah and all, in Woodstock, N.Y., but it had long been obvious that she had a unique look that didn't match that of the rest of her family. Her dark complexion and kinky hair were officially attributed to an Italian grandfather. Families, of course, specialize in deflection and denial, and here the unspoken secret was that her mother's "friend," a black man who ran city recreation programs, was highly suspected of being Lacey's father.

Schwartz, directing herself (with help from James Adolphus), never brings full dimension to the story. It sits flat on the screen, and the "reveal" here is hardly a mystery. She doesn't extract deep emotion or observations from either of her parents or her biological father. She fails to connect fully with either her Jewish relatives or the newfound black ones, as if few of them wanted to be a part of this project.

"Little White Lie" lacks the heft and horror of more mature documentaries that rip bandages from gaping family wounds, such as "Capturing the Friedmans." Nor does it have the elegance of a drama like "Ida." It's a good story, but as a film it feels half-finished.