30 August 2015

The Creeps: Part I


THE GIFT (B+) - Jason Bateman to the rescue. Just when you think he might fall into a rut, the sly actor ups his game.

Here he carries a suspenseful drama that fellow actor Joel Edgerton (in his feature debut as a writer/director) molds as worthy homage to Hitchcock. Bateman plays Simon, an ambitious corporate player gunning for a big promotion. He and wife Robyn (Rebecca Hall) suffered through a miscarriage in the past year, and they are starting fresh by moving back near his hometown. They have all the trappings of privilege in their huge new house.

While getting settled in, they run into Gordo (Edgerton), a high school classmate of Simon's. Gordo quickly becomes clingy, leaving a a gift on their doorstep and soon ingratiating himself into their lives. Gordo is socially awkward and seems to be still nagged by his high school experience.

Is he a stalker or just a friendly lonely man. Robyn wants to give him the benefit of the doubt; Simon warns that Gordo is a nuisance. When Gordo invites Simon and Robyn to his own house, it's clear that something is off kilter. Whatever happened 25 years ago with "Gordo the Weirdo" has not been reconciled.

Edgerton has crafted a taut thriller. The balance among the three principals evolves over the course of two hours, and the filmmaker avoids a lot of common pitfalls. He plays with windows and reflections. He doesn't clutter the story but instead gradually leaks out revelations that build to a strong climax.

But while all three actors are on top of their game and Edgerton covers all the narrative bases, in the end the film lacks a bit of emotional payoff. The final twist is intended as a gut punch, but feels more like a convenient plot device than a natural resolution. This is an adroit technical achievement and a fun ride. But, like Gordo and Simon, something's not quite right.
 

25 August 2015

New to the Queue

Adding heft ...

The provocative story of a 15-year-old girl sleeping with her mom's boyfriend, "Diary of a Teenage Girl."

Bobcat Goldthwait turns to the documentary format to tell the story of a comedic mentor, "Call Me Lucky."

A wacky comedy about two women trying to get to the beach, starring another daughter of Chris Elliott, "Fort Tilden."

A friend tees up Hubert Sauper's latest documentary, "We Come as Friends." She writes: "'Darwin's Nightmare,' if I recall correctly, featured war-mongering, corruption, sexual exploitation/abuse, environmental pillage, and general despair. Great film. This one, per the snippet interview I heard with the director yesterday, features environmental pillage, war-mongering, human cruelty, and general despair emerging from colonialist capitalism. Obviously, documentary films change the world. Look how much has changed in Africa since 'Darwin's Nightmare.'"

Sitting through a Paul Weitz film might be worth it for Lily Tomlin and some intergenerational humor in "Grandma."

Joe Swanberg doesn't let up, and his latest has an all-star hipster cast, so we will apprehensively take a peek at "Digging for Fire."

A documentary about the legendary motorcycle stuntman, "Being Evel."

Another documentary, this one about riding the rails in China, "Iron Ministry."

Two brothers deal with love and relationships in the indie debut of writer/director John Magary, "The Mend."
 

23 August 2015

One-Liners: Someday We'll Laugh About This


GOODBYE LENIN! (2003) (B) - A fond look back at the fall of the Berlin Wall, this bittersweet farce imagines a young man and his sister concocting an elaborate ruse to convince their loyal Communist mother, who has just emerged from an eight-month coma, that all is still status quo in the German Democratic Republic.

A young Daniel Bruhl ("Rush") is charming as Alex, the determined son, who has a buddy record fake newscasts, persuades neighbors to keep up the facade of a thriving regime, and searches high and low for discarded jars of Mom's favorite pickles and jam so that he can transfer the Western products into the old containers. As bed-ridden Mom (Katrin Sass) gets suspicious, Alex and his sister, Ariane (Maria Simon), must get more creative in their scheming.

It's all rather clever, though it need not have been stretched out to a full two hours of running time. Alex has a love interest, Lara (the adorable Chulpan Khamatova), the Russian nurse who cared for Mom. Ariane, a single mom of an infant, finds an understanding boyfriend from West Germany, Rainer (Alexander Beyer). Mom and the kids were abandoned by their father when the kids were young; he went off to the West, but then never apparently sent for them.

Wolfgang Becker's film is alternatively madcap and wistful. The cast is especially appealing. More economical storytelling would have provided just a little more zip.

TWO NIGHT STAND (C-minus) - The kids make a movie! Max Nichols, son of legendary Mike Nichols, directs a silly millennial romantic comedy. Here, a pair hook up for a one-night stand, but they get snowed in, so they try to make it through a second night.

Our boy Miles Teller has really outgrown the aw-shucks slickster role, the cute safe boy, and here he's dragged down by the marginally talented Analeigh Tipton, a former contestant on "America's Next Top Model" who suffers from the curse of "Damsels in Distress," a movie so bad that we made it into a thing. Teller's shtick fails to click, and Tipton is a disaster at line readings and at trying to play sexy (while maintaining a PG posture in the bedroom scenes).

The writers strive for edginess and honesty, but it all comes off as forced and cloying. A twist in the second half abandons any pretext at authenticity and mires Tipton's character in a stereotypical pining, jilted lover.

The soundtrack has a cheesy '80s rom-com feel to it. The ending is as goofy as it is trite. It's just not for mature audiences.
 

20 August 2015

Staring Contest


STRAY DOGS (C) - There is rarely anything like a Tsai Ming-liang film. Usually that's a good thing.

There was nothing quite like his magical run of films a little over a decade ago: "What Time Is It There?," "Goodbye, Dragon Inn," "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone." They were visually arresting, with slow-paced, arch story lines. They were hard to forget.

But the few features from the Taiwan master since have slowly trickled into the United States. You can see why expectations would be high for "Stray Dogs," which turns out to be a challenge for even the most devoted art-house junkie. It doesn't really have a narrative, but it's apparently about an alcoholic man in Taipei living on the streets with his young son and daughter. They may or may not find a home with a grocery store clerk, apparently played by three different women, for no explained reason.

Shooting on crisp digital, Tsai brings vibrant colors and sharp detail to the usual grubby visuals of homeless life -- sleeping on old mattresses, washing up in a men's room sink. These vignettes run in no particular order. The kids are not very interesting. The father drowns in pathos while he's drowning in booze. Tsai's perennial male lead, Kang-sheng Lee, lends the character a wistful heaviness.

There are few payoffs. Tsai's camera just sits and stares, and too often what we're watching (the family brushing its teeth, a grocery store worker stocking shelves, a woman feeding her dogs) is dreadfully boring. Nothing interesting happens. Even if that's intentional, it doesn't make for a fun 138 minutes.

This aim for high art becomes a crashing bore. However, the final two shots -- clocking in at about 20 minutes -- are for the ages. If you have to fast-forward, stop at the 1:52:00 mark and sit back and watch the history of a couple unfold in stony silence.

It is scenes such as those that made Tsai one of last decade's most riveting storytellers. If he really is giving up on making films, maybe it's because he just has no more stories to tell.

We'll always have Taipei.
  

16 August 2015

Wrecking Now


THE WRECKING CREW (A-minus) - Much like "20 Feet From Stardom," this look back at studio musicians in the 1960s is a delight, beyond just the sheer joy of the music.

Unsung heroes get their due, thanks to Denny Tedesco, the son of legendary session guitarist Tommy Tedesco, who died in the '90s. Denny pulls together interviews from the last 20 years, including those featuring his dad -- such as a roundtable with other L.A. studio hands known as the Wrecking Crew. The film resurrects Dick Clark and other participants of the Wrecking Crew who died before the film's release this year.

These men (and one woman) are behind many of the mega-hits of the era -- sitting in for the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Association ("Windy") and the Monkees. They backed Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Simon & Garfunkel, Sonny & Cher, the Mamas & the Papas, the 5th Dimension, Herb Alpert, Henry Mancini, Carole King -- and on and on. Tommy Tedesco's guitar is familiar from TV themes, including "Bonanza," "Batman" and "MASH."

The son avoids creating a sappy valentine to his father (though we could have used one or two fewer home-movie clips) and instead celebrates the hugely talented folks who never got their names in the album liner notes. Archival footage and photos re-create a giddy era of pure pop music. Cher joins a cavalcade of reverential talking heads, including the two most famous Wrecking Crew alums, Glen Campbell and Leon Russell. Songwriter Jimmy Webb hangs around, too.

The members are mostly dismissive of those who say they never got the glory they deserved. But a little bitterness does poke through. One musician laments the record companies' practice of following up a perfectly crafted pop song by rounding up "a bunch of white kids out of high school" to tour behind it.

The film is not just about the songs but about the process. Like the recent feature "Love & Mercy," Tedesco's documentary revels in the technical wonk of record production. The musicians re-create iconic riffs: the opening bass line to "Let the Sunshine In," the saxophone intro to "Pink Panther Theme," the upright bass intro to "These Boots Are Made for Walking," and the opening drum beats to "A Little Less Conversation." Carol Kaye (the token woman) walks us through the bass line she created to kick off "The Beat Goes On."

It all ended pretty quickly, with the onset of the singer-songwriter era. But that beat goes on and on.

A POEM IS A NAKED PERSON (B-minus) - One member of the wrecking crew who broke through as a solo performer (along with Glen Campbell) was Leon Russell. Created by the legendary Les Blank, this is a 1974 film that is only now getting a full release.

In the style of the Maysles brothers, Blank's camera is mostly a blank stare, unremarkably recording events as they unfold. He captures the sights and sounds of Oklahoma (Russell was born in Tulsa) and the life of touring in the early '70s. Russell -- at this point quite hirsute but not yet hiding behind sunglasses -- is a curious character, but he's not the most compelling subject for a film. Blank lets his camera wander to random locals and studio rats to fill in the gaps. It's not a wrecking crew so much as a motley one.

Believing this to be his big breakthrough, Blank waxes artistic. He is rather obsessed with rivers and streams. He captures an incredible sunset rippling on water, accompanied by Russell's version of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry."

It's moments like that -- along with a few stirring live performances by Russell -- which make "Poem" worth a 90-minute trip to a much simpler time.

BONUS TRACKS
The trailer to "The Wrecking Crew":



Best cover song ever? Willie Nelson with Leon Russell's "Song for You":




Willie and Leon from their under-appreciated 1979 album, this bluesy number:



And one for the road:


 

10 August 2015

Noir Chronicles

Not a strong lineup at this year's annual Guild Cinema summer festival of film noir:

RIDE THE PINK HORSE (1947) (C+) - This slow twisting drama lacks action and fails to make it up in intrigue.

An ex-GI named Lucky Gagin (Robert Montgomery (Liz's dad), who also directed from a Ben Hecht script) arrives in San Pablo, a town in northern New Mexico, played here by Santa Fe. He seeks to avenge the death of a buddy by blackmailing mobster Frank Hugo (Fred Clark, "Burns and Allen").

Gagin makes friends with a carousel operator, Pancho (Thomas Gomez), and he's constantly trailed by simple, doe-eyed Pila (Wanda Hendrix), who, in the worst colonialist manner, acts as his good-luck charm. The fiesta is in town, so that adds a dash of local flavor (though Montgomery and the producers don't have the budget to actually show the burning of Zozobra, so the characters just make reference to the off-screen spectacle).

Montgomery and Hecht throw in a kindly but cagey G-man, and while most of the performances are strong, the story never coheres and the tension frequently falters. The cinematography is often more muddy than moody. In many ways this is smart and subtle, but it can be a bit of a drag. 

THE HITCH-HIKER (1953) (B) - Two blue-collar guys pick up the wrong dude along the highway.

Screen sizzler Ida Lupino ("While the City Sleeps") slips behind the camera to unwind a familiar tale -- the gunman on the run, taking two fishing buddies hostage for a ride across the border into Mexico. William Talman (Hamilton Burger on "Perry Mason"), the Steve Buscemi of his day, is perfect as murderer Emmett Myers, who's trying to keep a few steps ahead of the law, with the forced assistance of Collins (Edmon O'Brien) and Bowen (Frank Lovejoy). Myers uses physical and psychological tactics to keep the men in line, as their attempts to leave clues are repeatedly foiled.

Lupino has a keen sense of danger and suspense, and she works the forbidding landscape of Baja California to great effect. The weak links here are the cutaways to wooden law enforcement officials on both sides of the border as they struggle to track Myers.

A fine rhythm develops among the three actors, and Lupino (who co-wrote with three others) keeps things believable. She wisely wraps it up in a neat 71 minutes, with a climax as good as any of its era.

BONUS TRACK
Eighties heartland popsters the Embarrassment with a tribute to Robert Montgomery's daughter:


 

08 August 2015

Doc Watch: The Blues

A couple of legends.
 
WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? (B+) - A faithful, fascinating look at the artist who melded classical music with blues, jazz and gospel and who was a powerful creative force in the 1960s and '70s.

Nina Simone's emergence in the 1960s, as a leading voice in the civil-rights movement, impatient with the tenets of non-violence and leaning more toward "by any means necessary."  She evolved into a downright revolutionary, and her political out-spokenness damaged her commercial viability until she fled in exile.

This is a family-authorized biography (her daughter was executive producer and contributes on camera), but it doesn't sugar-coat Simone's difficult personality or the demons she struggled with. Her ex-husband, Andrew Stroud, shows up, too. Through her diary entries and audio snippets of old interviews, Simone describes a hellish existence at the hands of the brutal Stroud, who also was her manager. A bandmate says Stroud worked her like a racehorse throughout the '60s. Their daughter, the poor thing, says they were both crazy. Simone eventually snapped.

By the end of the '60s, like the civil-rights and anti-war movements, she was defeated -- physically, emotionally, psychologically. She considered herself a mere ghost of her physical being, with a thin grasp on her sanity.

The joy of "What Happened" is the musical performances. Veteran documentarian Liz Garbus bucks the modern trend of fileting clips into frustrating snippets. We are treated to extended clips of some of her most popular songs and most riveting stage moments. Her version of Janis Ian's "Stars" (below) is devastating. Simone (born Eunice Waymon in 1933) cut her teeth on Bach, and she combines her facility on the keyboards with the scary ability to inhabit the songs she sings, as if to battle her demons fright by fright. Garbus chips away at Simone's puzzling facade like a sculptor. 

B.B. KING: THE LIFE OF RILEY (2012) (C+) - A polite, fawning documentary of the blues legend comes replete with sonorous narration by Morgan Freeman. The only warts included here are casually passed off as the antics of a harmless rascal (even by the women he cheated on).

A surprising amount of time is spent on the early years of Riley King, who would get his nickname as a DJ in Memphis, tagged as "Blues Boy King." Things get interesting in the second hour, when his influence if felt by the bands from the British invasion, and he finds a sympatico producer who helps create the 1969 signature hit, "The Thrill Is gone."

King is refreshingly candid in the interviews culled from various periods in his life -- on race relations, his sexual predations, and his musical collaborations. But it still feels too safe, as if King had veto power over the final product (released three years before his death in May). The talking heads -- Carlos Santana, Bonnie Raitt, Eric Clapton and other rock dinosaurs (has Bono ever passed up an opportunity to speak in a documentary?) -- ingratiate way more than they enlighten about the man's skills. And there's not nearly enough of King's music featured here, and what is provided is chopped up into bits.

BONUS TRACKS

Nina Simone, "Backlash Blues":



B.B. King, "How Blue Can You Get":



Simone, with Janis Ian's "Stars":


  

05 August 2015

From the Archives


TWO FOR THE ROAD (1967) (B) - Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn star in this inventive look at the evolution of a relationship from meet-cute into an ossified marriage.

Stanley Donen ("Singin' in the Rain," "Funny Face") chops up the timeline with frequent flashbacks and flash-forwards that lend substance and an indie cred to a sneakily smart script by Frederic Raphael, the British-educated American whose credits include the original "Far From the Madding Crowd" and "Eyes Wide Shut." Raphael has an ear for the snap of dialogue between a man and a woman, as well as a confident hand with a narrative.

Hepburn is charming as usual, and she shows finesse as both the wide-eyed single gal and as the older, jaded wife. Finney is quite Finney throughout, not as successful at bridging the years. The eras are marked by the different model cars they drive or ride in; they had met on a European road trip, him an architect, her a singer. One series of scenes features the delightful William Daniels (TV's "St. Elsewhere") and Eleanor Bron as the Manchesters, annoying Americans on a European vacation with their over-indulged spoiled-brat daughter.

The film, despite capturing the gestalt common to '60s road movies, has aged well and still boasts a modern tone. The sometimes-happy couple give off a whiff of what it might have been like for Ben and Elaine of "The Graduate" after their bus ride, if they were plainly aware of how George and Martha turned out in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
  

03 August 2015

Life Is Short: The New Slackers

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, here here and here.

Two immigrants, a young man and a woman (Axl and Vera), cross paths in a London flat with a transitory nature. Very little happens. The guy goes to a club and gets snockered a lot, as bad music plays. This is one of the worst soundtracks, much of it sounding as if the Shaggs and Ween formed a super-group to sing discordant discarded Stephen Malkmus demos. Some of the offenders: Plaster of Paris, (We Are) Performance, and Kimya Dawson.

The 20-year-olds are not interesting, especially when they are drunk or high. This is the sophomore effort from Alexis Dos Santos, a 40-year-old from Argentina, and she hasn't made a follow-up. This one's a mess. Maybe she is still regrouping, or perhaps she gave up.

Title: UNMADE BEDS (feature, 2009)
Running Time: 97 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull: 38 MIN (including some fast-forwarding)
Portion Watched: 39%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 52 YRS, 9 MO.
Average Male American Lifespan: 81.2 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Cleansed the palate with a PBS "Austin City Limits" with Sarah Jarosz (see below)
Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 100-1.

BONUS TRACKS
First, some of the worst offenders on the "Unmade Beds" soundtrack:

Mary and the Boy, "Fuck Me":



Kimya Dawson, "Underground":



Connan Mockasin, "Hello View":




Plaster of Paris, "Beat a New Heartbeat":



 OK, that was enough. Here's the palate cleanser, the talented Sarah Jarosz with "Come On Up to the House":



Jarosz, "Over the Edge":


 

01 August 2015

New to the Queue

Scraps ...

Joshua Oppenheimer follows his bizarre documentary "An Act of Killing" with a companion film, "The Look of Silence."

From James Ponsoldt ("Smashed," "The Spectacular Now"), the chatty David Foster Wallace biopic, with Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg, "The End of the Tour."

A French remake about a single mother who goes into business with a gigolo, resulting in violence and intrigue, "Alleluia."

"Barbara" director Christian Petzold and his star, Nina Hoss, re-team for a follow-up set in post-war Germany, "Phoenix."

Keith Miller follows his hit-and-miss "Welcome to Pine Hill" with another urban verite ramble, "Five Star."

A psychological workup from Israeli writer/director Nadav Lapid, "The Kindergarten Teacher."

When Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley went at each other during the 1968 political conventions, "The Best of Enemies."

Jem Cohen follows up his moody "Museum Hours" with a moody thumb-sucker, "Counting."

A promising debut from Alex R. Johnson, about a swindler in Austin, Texas, "Two Step."