One-Liners: Docs

DON'T THINK I'VE FORGOTTEN: CAMBODIA'S LOST ROCK AND ROLL (B+) -  "When we were young, we loved being modern." That is the wistful opening line that wafts throughout a film weighted by symbolism and cultural conundrums.

This thoughtful documentary celebrates the Phnom Penh scene, a brief period during the 1960s when Cambodians caught the wave of rock 'n' roll. The tone is bittersweet though, because -- as the filmmakers deftly explain through historical clips -- by the early '70s the music was driven back underground by a military dictatorship and war, and then buried by the unimaginable horrors of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.

Veteran cameraman John Pirozzi, here directing his second documentary, has a keen sense of history and the culture of the country. He gathers veterans of that scene, along with a fan or two from the era as they look back with almost as much consternation (did that all really happen) as pride and joy.

One veteran talks about feeling "the echo" of other cultures' popular music. And the Cambodians did borrow heavily. You can hear bands that sound like the Ventures or the Hollies or Cream. We hear cover versions of Santana and James Taylor.

The film is not weighted down by western-style nostalgia. One woman -- a fan not a performer -- is still a bit starry-eyed about that heyday. But no one suggests that it's a shame to have lost their rock 'n' roll swagger forever. These aren't American boomers who would shrivel and die if they didn't still have the opportunity to pay hundreds of dollars to watch the Rolling Stones perform at age 70-plus.

If anything, the '60s rock scene in Phnom Penh was an aberration, a bizarre blip of western decadence. You get the sense that those who lived through it understand that, and that it's not really a tragedy that life (and death) took a different path. That's a Big Idea that Pirozzi plays with here, and he succeeds in leaving the viewer haunted long after the credits. 

HOT GIRLS WANTED (B-minus) - Turns out that the lives of 19-year-old girls aren't very interesting, even if they are pro-am porn stars.

Rashida Jones produced this Netflix streamer about young adults getting churned through the new era of internet pornography. We mainly follow Tressa who, mostly out of boredom, falls for a deceptive Craigslist ad and finds herself on a free flight to Miami, ending up in the home of D-level entrepreneur Levi and his low-rent harem of lost girls. Clips of her porn career are interspersed with her life afterward (average shelf life is measured in months, and the money doesn't go very far), explaining to her mom what she did for a living. She's quite ordinary -- she has an understanding boyfriend, too -- but directors Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus are not crafty enough to turn that into true human drama.

Jones and her directors struggle to find a balance between exploitation and explanation. Other girls are foul-mouthed and boastful. They don't deny that they eventually are forced to perform more and more debasing acts for less and less money. They know that a planeload of 18-year-old girls just landed at the Miami airport that afternoon and that they (and their fake personas) will be soon forgotten.

They frolic in mostly tasteful R-rated nudity, party like poor Kardashians, and struggle to articulate what they are going through. They're called amateurs, though they make decent money. They play-act as sultry virgins satisfying creepy older men. They talk smack about Duke student Belle Knox. They give themselves banal stage names, such as Brooklyn.

The production is slick, and the graphics help move the story along. But Tressa's drama -- Will she tell her father? If so, how will he react? -- is a bust by the end. No other young woman gets enough screen time to become a fully fleshed-out character. Ironically.

BONUS TRACKS
Here's an hour's worth of classic Cambodian rock: