A Guy's Life

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT (B+) - Otto is having quite a go of it. His wife has dumped him, and he's feeling his way around the modern dating scene, including the Facebook lure of old flames. And he's recovering from a broken foot, suffered during a stupid four-wheeling accident that glaringly symbolizes both Otto's immaturity and his obliviousness.

Angus MacLachlan, who wrote the wonderful "Junebug" in 2005, goes behind the camera for the first time to film his latest script. It's a fascinating character study, pulled off well by the lanky and darkly handsome Paul Schneider ("George Washington," TV's "Parks and Recreation") as Otto.

Poor Otto is totally blindsided by Annie (Melanie Lynskey, understated but effective), who orders him to attend one of her shrink sessions ("You go to therapy?" he wonders aloud to her), where her therapist (Celia Weston) proceeds to inform Otto that his marriage is over. It's a sharp scene -- both funny and heartreaking -- and it sets a strong foundation. What follows is a series of vignettes that can be rather hit-and-miss, depending, in part, on the viewer's tolerance for the male fantasy of having beautiful young women fall all over a scruffy, messed-up manchild.

While struggling to connect with his daughter Edie (Audrey Scott), Otto -- literally limping along -- experiences a series of flings with a parade of hotties of various ages. There's Stephanie (a saucy Heather Graham), a former summer campmate who is organizing a reunion. And we meet Mildred (a smoldering Ashley Hinshaw from "About Cherry"), a modern gal who wants Otto only for the meaningless trysts and who lectures him when he has the temerity to ask her out on a traditional date. The superstar, though, is Debbie Spangler (spunky Anna Camp from "Pitch Perfect"), who is trying to be a good Christian girl (Edie drags Otto to church for an unexplained reasons) but doesn't have a firm handle on her libido or emotions.

Drowning in it, Otto still pines for the one who got away -- former girlfriend Lara (a powerful Heather Lawless), whose availability is revealed only in the final third. It all climaxes with the convergence of several solicitous women leaving an overwhelmed Otto a-fluster. Will he focus on what's important and grow as a human being? We're hopeful.

MacLachlan has a way with dialogue (especially in an otherwise throwaway scene between Otto and his doctor pal), and he captures the delight and terror of being newly single on the brink of 40. He crafts a clear narrative, but it's definitely choppy. The film's parts don't cohere into a fully successful whole. But Schneider, with is strong jaw and a Steve Martin charm and humor, makes you care about how this all turns out in the end.
 

Original Sin

STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE (B+) - What an asshole.

That was the phrase that popped into my head, even before the woman behind me in the theater whispered it to her date.

The prolific Alex Gibney ("Going Clear," "We Steal Secrets," "The Armstrong Lie") takes us on a dark yet enlightening journey into the biography of Steve Jobs, the co-founder (and returning savior) of Apple. Starting with the Lennon-like global mourning of the man in 2011, Gibney savors the aura and then spends nearly three-quarters of his two-hour documentary building up the man, the myth and the legend. But you know the hammer will eventually fall on those sneakered feet of clay.

Jobs was apparently quite the jerk. He cheated Steve Wozniak out of a few thousand dollars on an early project of theirs. He denied paternity of his daughter. He drove his employees to the brink of destroying their personal lives. He co-opted the images of Gandhi and Einstein in order to sell gadgets.

But he was handsome and charming and talented. He was a visionary. He was driven to not only thrive in business but also change the culture. He succeeded in both.

Gibney grinds through Jobs' narrative chronologically, in workmanlike fashion. There's nothing extraordinary about the storytelling. We hear from Wozniak, as well as from the ex-wife and from other colleagues along the way. There is fascinating file footage from the heady days of the '70s when the pioneer spirit took hold in what was to become known as Silicon Valley. We see the iconic "1984" Super Bowl ad. There is the fall and rise, the ousting and the triumphant return, leading to the marketing genius of the annual unveiling (the iPod! the iPhone!) and the resulting hyperventilating by the press and the fanboys.

And that's when Gibney finally connects some dots and -- like the media always does and like the public enjoys -- tears down the man he built up. There is an edge to the slice and dice of a flawed man, a bit of anger seeping through.

By the end, though, we're not just left with a pair of warring images of Steve Jobs. Gibney is going from something a little deeper. He's reflecting our behavior back to us. He's using Jobs as a sort-of x-ray of society. It's as if Jobs were a victim of our collective excesses, a guy who just knew how to tap into the zeitgeist, exploit it -- and then, like a guru, convey it to us with a Zen-like air of inevitability. He guided us into a brave new world; it's our own fault if we saw him as a god.

He might have been a gentle genius of his age. But -- no surprise -- he was kind of a dick, too.
 

Tentative on Toronto

There hasn't been exciting news out of this week's Toronto International Film Festival, and other previews of the fall season are looking pretty grim. We're not hopeful.

But there's this glimpse from the Globe & Mail of a few nuggets out of Canada that will get tucked deep into the queue:

In a welcome twist, the Canadian contingent has never been stronger. Although homegrown filmmakers no longer have a dedicated program – and opening night has ceded to underwhelming Hollywood fare – this year heralded a new generation of artists so talented that it throws the entire narrative of obligatory CanCon into question. Andrew Cividino’s Sleeping Giant is a masterpiece: not just the best Canadian film of the year, but one of the best to play the festival, period. Kazik Radwanski’s How Heavy This Hammer, Stephen Dunn’s Closet Monster and Igor Drljaca’s The Waiting Room are all works of startling confidence. Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton, meanwhile, is a delirious pseudo-documentary by Guy Maddin and Galen and Evan Johnson (it screened for free at the Bell Lightbox, though in an out-of-the-way and poorly promoted location, perhaps the gravest TIFF insult to its countrymen since the 2010 fest opened with Score: A Hockey Musical). It was as if witnessing a new era of Canadian cinema – one that’s more independent, ferocious and unconcerned about the country’s outdated star system (cough, Paul Gross’s Hyena Road and Atom Egoyan’s Remember, cough).

New to the Queue

Cooling off ...

Our guy Alex Ross Perry ("The Color Wheel," "Listen Up Philip") is back, with Elisabeth Moss in tow, for "Queen of Earth."

Our boy Jason Schwartzman is enough of a draw for the droll, lightweight indie film "7 Chinese Brothers."

A strong new documentary entry from director Stanley Nelson, "The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution."

An emotional and psychological battle between teen female friends, from France, "Breathe."

A documentary about a polygamous Mormon fundamentalist sect, "Prophet's Prey."

A harrowing look at endangered species, Louie Psihoyos' documentary "Racing Extinction."

A debut feature from Steven Piet, the hardboiled mystery "Uncle John."

This one looks sketchy, but we're still giving Francois Ozon an opportunity to disappoint us for the first time: "The New Girlfriend."
 

The Man, the Myth

LISTEN TO ME MARLON (B+) - Marlon Brando left behind a trove of cassette tapes filled with his philosophical ramblings, and Stevan Riley has turned it all into a magical biography.

In a manner similar to that of "Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck," Riley raids the actor's personal archives and uses Brando's own voice to narrate what is essentially a psychological study of the great American actor. While it starts slowly, it finds its footing by the halfway mark and flirts with the profound by the end.

Brando was a troubled soul. He talks about his alcoholic parents. He admits to infidelities. He goes on rapturously about Tahiti and its people and the refreshing absence of sinful American culture there. He nearly boasts about taking roles in horrid movies in the '60s just to make a buck. He claims to have rewritten his Kurtz character in "Apocalypse Now." He frets about his weight gain, chiding himself about indulging to excess. With his fervid brain, he is fundamentally human.

Curiously, Riley bookends the film with news clips and audio snippets surrounding the fatal shooting by his son Christian of the boyfriend of Christian's half-sister Cheyenne back in the early 1990s. (Christian did prison time, struggled with addictions and died before he was 50; Cheyenne, who was pregnant at the time of the shooting, committed suicide at 25.) We see familiar footage of Brando breaking down on the witness stand while admitting his failings as a father. (It's been reported that he sired at least a dozen children with various women.)

The tapes can be quite enlightening. Some are marked "Meditation," wherein Brando offers incantations and calming suggestions in an attempt to ease his anxieties. He found much duality in existence, and he convinced himself that life and making a living are somewhat of a scam. The trick is to ignore all the trappings of western culture and embrace the simplicity of nature.

Riley marches chronologically, methodically building a version of the man as only a skilled biographer can. It is intimate and compelling. The montage is obviously missing some major aspects of his personality and career, but these bits and pieces eventually cohere into a satisfying whole.

BONUS TRACK
The mesmerizing song over the end credits, "Don't Get Any Closer" by Eluvium:


 

Who Are You?

GLEN CAMPBELL: I'LL BE ME (B-minus) -  There's a fine line between courageous and exploitative. This is a rough look at singer Glen Campbell's slow descent into dementia, endorsed by his family members, who gladly appear.

At nearly two hours, this is too much reality filmmaking, with repetitive scenes of Campbell acting goofy, exhibiting his forgetfulness or lashing out at his wife and grown kids. Actor and TV director James Keach shows little imagination as he alternates between shaky performances on the farewell tour (with three of his children in the band) and trips to doctors for progressively bad news. He also fumbles the opening, failing to properly put Campbell's career in perspective.

Some scenes are quite touching, but too often the drama is deflated. A malfunctioning teleprompter at the start of a show should be more harrowing than it eventually comes off as.

Campbell's wife, Kim, gives it a gallant try, but she is unable to carry the film. Talking heads as diverse as songwriter Jimmy Webb and U2's the Edge provide little insight. And you might get tired of hearing "Gentle on My Mind," which cycles through with regularity.

This would have been better as a one-hour special.

LAMBERT & STAMP (B-minus) - This is the story of the two would-be film auteurs who shaped the image of The Who and settled for being managers to one of the richest bands in rock history. The problem is, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp aren't all that interesting as subjects of a documentary.

In fact, they aren't even the most interesting ones or the most talented artists in their respective families.  Lambert is the son of a renowned composer/conductor Constant Lambert and grandson of a sculptor/painter. Stamp is the brother of acclaimed actor Terence Stamp.

Director James D. Cooper, in a debut after a career as a cinematographer, shows a fondness for these old blokes and for the surviving Who members -- the endlessly indulgent Pete Townshend and the endlessly one-dimensional Roger Daltry. They and a bunch of graying pals spin tales of the mad, mod Swingin' Sixties. Red-nosed Richard Barnes ("Barney") is the most fun; he seems to have especially savored the guys' decadent run. A deluge of archival footage -- much of it shot by Lambert and Stamp in their Warholian and Godardian pursuit of their shaggy-haired muses -- dredges up the long-gone scene. The current talking-head interviews of the grizzled boys tend to ramble; Stamp is especially indulged.

Lambert, a Brian Epstein type, spent the '70s in a spiral of drink and drugs, and he followed Keith Moon to the grave, in 1981. Stamp, who had the manner of a mobster back in the day, retains his working-class accent and is an agreeable enough fellow. He just doesn't make for compelling cinema.

If you want a doc about the Who or some kick-ass classic arena rock, look elsewhere.

BONUS TRACK
Cambell, on his final album, covers the epic popsters Guided by Voices, with Robert Pollard's "Hold on Hope":

One of the highlights of "Lambert & Stamp" is footage of Pete Townshend playing for the men a demo of "Glittering Girl." Here's how it turned out:


 

Aimless Youth: Part III

THE MEND (A-minus) - We end our little trilogy with a look at what these young adults ferment into as they hit 30 and beyond.

Mat and Alan are brothers who barely disguise their inability to contain their anger and frustrations. We never really tap into the source of that vitriol (though we hear tales about their rakish father), but it doesn't matter; we're in the moment, so let's deal with it.

Mat (Josh Lucas) is a failed web designer, who clings to his clunky laptop even though it's not doing him much good. Alan (Stephen Plunkett) is plotting to propose to his girlfriend, Farrah (the wonderful Mickey Sumner from "Frances Ha," here sans spectacles), on an upcoming trip, even though it's painfully obvious that they have a host of serious issues, epitomized by an early, raunchy dispute over his preferred ejaculatory habits. (Snappy one-liners often take the edge off of the proceedings.)

After a quick montage of Mat being an obvious asshole, he shows up uninvited at a hipster get-together at Alan's flat. The party scene meanders for a good half hour, leaving the viewer unsure as to where this is going and whom we're supposed to follow. New writer/director John Magary uses this disorienting method to leave us off-balance all movie. It's a smart move, because it tends to draw us into the various moments and away from the demands of conventional narrative. The characters grow on us as we glimpse the quirky aspects of their personality.

After the party, Alan goes off on his trip, and Mat stays put. Eventually, his girlfriend Andrea shows up. (They, too, have a knock-down/drag-out in the opening moments of the movie, during which she orders him, at the top of her lungs, to leave her apartment.) Andrea then decides to bring her son Ronnie (Cory Nichols) over to Alan's apartment, because her building has bedbugs. Eventually, Alan returns prematurely from the debacle of a vacation with Farrah, and the stage is set for fireworks.

Magary shoots and edits in a nervous, jazzy Cassavetes manner. The dialogue often comes out in snippets, as if Magary intentionally excises every third word just to see what would happen. A running gag involves sporadic electric outages at Alan's apartment; another revolves around a malfunctioning doorknob to the bathroom. This creates a jangled feeling in the viewer, so prepare to be unsettled.

Lucas is craggily handsome, but his scruffy Mat starts out in bad physical shape and gradually deteriorates, developing a harrowing hack by the end of the film. Mat is literally overflowing with bile; by the final act he is spitting and spewing as he rants and reels. Alan's rage is quieter but feels more dangerous. Eventually, the two end up alone, like a bitter old couple, comically impotent. Journeyman Austin Pendleton provides both comic relief and sharp contrast with the bumbling younger men as Earl, a raconteur who was a friend of their father's and now, apparently, is with their mother.

Magary avoids just about all the pitfalls of the ubiquitous Brooklyn art-house indie screenplays. There's nothing precious or self-indulgent going on here. These two brothers are a mess. Their girlfriends can be pills. The power grid can be fickle. Life is intermittent. It neither begins nor ends here. Not every word or image can be captured. Don't fret. It'll work out, one way or another.

BONUS TRACK
The appealing trailer:


  

Aimless Youth: Part II

GUEROS (C+) - This debut feature reeks of film-school artifice. It is far too precious and self-indulgent to pull off its wistful depiction of '90s-era student unrest in Mexico City.

Shooting in stylized black-and-white, Alonso Ruizpalacios unloads his bag of tricks and overwhelms what could have been a touching road movie -- "Duck Season" meets "The Motorcycle Diaries." Cliches abound. The shaky camera running after a character through winding streets. The manic pixie dream girl (protest leader Ana (Ilse Salas), reduced to being an object of lust and longing). Elevator doors opening with the car missing, leaving a view of the deadly shaft. Preciously choreographed crowd scenes. Young men striding in slow motion. Meta-commentary has the characters remarking on the quality of the film they're in.

Young Tomas (Sebastian Aguirre) is too much for his mom to handle, so she ships him off to live with his older brother, Federico (Tenoch Huerta), a.k.a. Sombra (Shadow), and his fellow slacker roommate Santos (Leonardo Ortizgris), killing time while idled from school during the protests and shutdowns. They pick up Ana for a lazy road trip.

That's where I lost the connection. Ruizpalacios runs the title gag into the ground -- Tomas is much lighter-skinned than his brother (he's a guero, or paleface), and those around him keep bringing it up, to little effect. Tomas clings to a cassette tape of an old balladeer, Epigmenio Cruz, a favorite of their father's. A charming device involves each character taking turns at various times putting on headphones and sampling the cassette. When they don the headphones, the soundtrack goes silent, the opposite of what you'd expect; in this way the mystery builds about Cruz, who becomes the eventual object of the youngsters' epic journey. It's a magical touch, but it's just about the only organic element in an overly mannered films

But I'm a crank. Critics (and the audience I was with) loved this movie. Here's a sampling of the positive reviews:

Salon magazine:

It’s a gorgeous sound-and-vision journey through a mystical or mythical space that has echoes of the 1960s Paris of Godard and Truffaut and the 1980s New York of Jim Jarmusch.

The AV Club:

Even if "Güeros" doesn’t entirely work, it feels worthy: a film made independently and without interference whose reverence for the past thankfully doesn’t result in too much solemnity or seriousness. 

RogerEbert.com

Best debut feature I’ve seen in the last year, best Mexican film in recent memory, and best (black and white) cinematography since Pawel Pawlikowski’s equally stunning but very different “Ida.”

The New York Times:

The story pops and swerves; the images are by turns comical, banal and ravishing; and the result is a briskly shaken cocktail made of equal parts provocation and comfort. You come away with a buzz that is invigorating and pleasantly familiar.

Variety:

The personalities here feel genuine, as if a group of friends had banded together to make a movie just a few degrees removed from their real lives — a la “Clerks” or “Swingers,” though not nearly as conceptual, plot-wise.

Eh. Meh.
    

Aimless Youth: Part I

TU DORS NICOLE (A-minus) - You could say that Nicole is sleepwalking through a lazy Quebec summer, except she's having so much trouble falling asleep.

In one of the opening scene, Post-grad Nicole (Julianne Cote) and her friend Veronique (Catherine St.-Laurent) end up lost in a field while walking their bicycles. It turns out that each one thought the other was leading the way. That's how they'll meander all summer. Nicole has been left alone while her parents travel, and Veronique keeps her company. She's generally having a frustrating go of it (shorthanded nicely by a running gag in which Nicole struggles with her bike lock).

Director Stephane Lafleur, who wrote the script from a story by his regular collaborator Valerie Beaugrand-Champagne, shoots in dim black-and-white, a deadpan style that brings to mind the inertia of "Stranger Than Paradise" or "The Myth of the American Sleepover."  Nicole, who has a rather plain look, opens the movie by clumsily exiting the bed of a faceless casual date to head home at dawn. Veronique is blond and cuter, and tension grows between the pals when Nicole's brother, Remi (Marc-Andre Grondin) (10 years older) shows up and plants himself in the house with his two bandmates. This offers opportunities to flirt.

Remi is a moody one, overly demanding with his drummer(s) and bass player, never satisfied with their sound. (At one point, each musician plays in different rooms/floors of the house while recording.) The noise and the tension could be said to be disruptive to Nicole, but there's really nothing to disrupt (besides her friendship). The boys crank out a bunch of '90s-era drone, that mimics Pavement or Sebadoh. (The soundtrack is credited to Remy Nadeau Aubin.)

This all plays out in such a low-key manner that you wonder whether everyone, including the director, might be stoned -- or maybe you are. A surreal twist is added with the character of Martine (Godefroy Reding), a pipsqueak of about 12 whose voice has changed to such an extreme register that his voice is dubbed by an adult (Alexis Lefebvre). Martine crushes heavily on Nicole, who has served as his baby-sitter, and he has not only the tenor but the wisdom of a much older man, dropping philosophical bon mots into their conversations and vowing to wait for her to come around. Lafleur plays it half straight with Martine; and that represents the spirit of the film overall -- a balance of serious and screwball.

Lafleur and Beaugrand-Champagne have also suffused the film with subtext, but they wisely choose to stuff it deep below the surface. There is a family history that goes unexplored, and Nicole and Remi deal with their issues on separate tracks -- until a quite touching climactic scene that brings them together.

Until that point, "Tu Dors Nicole" is content to amble from vignette to vignette, a glorious encapsulation of the waning days of summer, which was the perfect time to view it.

BONUS TRACKS
A pair from Sebadoh's "Bakesale," just because. "License to Confuse" and "Rebound":




  

The Creeps: Part III

PHOENIX (B+) - Go all the way or don't go noir.

Writer/director Christian Petzold and his star, Nina Hoss, team up again after a successful '80s period piece (based in East Germany), "Barbara," for this harrowing tale of a Holocaust survivor in the days immediately following the fall of the Third Reich. The film not only has the classic look and feel of that era's noir cinema, but it borrows the genre's most common device: the idiot plot.

Hoss plays Nelly Letz, who we first see horribly disfigured while her friend (cousin?) Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) drives her through an American checkpoint charlie and to Lene's home in Berlin (itself home to the desolate Phoenix cabaret). Nelly undergoes extensive plastic surgery that alters her looks.

In fact, when the bandages come off and she ventures out in public in search of her husband, he doesn't recognize her. Or at least we are supposed to believe that he doesn't know it's her. (Therein lies the main aspect of the idiot plot.) But Nelly looks enough like her old self to give lunky Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld) a bright idea: a scheme in which this new lady portrays his wife and stages a valiant arrival by train, fresh from the camps. And then, he and "Nelly" will claim Nelly's fortune.

It's difficult to maintain credulity throughout this middle portion of the film, as Johnny dresses her like Nelly and schools her in Nellynalia. Nelly, meanwhile, delves into Lene's theory that Johnny was the one who gave Nelly up to the Nazis. (Lene, who's rather butch in her trousers, is either quite crushy on Nelly or fears for her well-being, or both.) Nelly plays along with Johnny and nearly trembles at the thought that Johnny truly loved her -- or may yet again.

Hoss is devastating as a wounded bird, traumatized by the horrors she has seen and endured. (Her face, with bags under her eyes, literally looks haunted.) Zehrfeld has the marshmallow stud visage of Brad Pitt and Brenden Fraser. (Friends, more attuned to classic cinema, saw Clark Gable.) Berlin, meanwhile, is in rubble -- a city destroyed by bombs and a people devastated by what has been unleashed in their name.

The story is both complicated and a bit corny. But Petzold knows his way around a narrative and provides subtle twists and turns as he ever so gradually churns this from a simmer to a slow boil. This could be an epic picture from the golden era, a poor sibling to "Casablanca," a rich homage to Hitchcock.

And the filmmaker has an ace up his sleeve the whole time -- a zinger of a final punchline that is both clever and unforgettable. (It seems like one of those instances in which a writer starts with a great ending and builds a story to lead up to it.) Petzold knows how to frame images and convey great emotion. Hoss is his muse (this is their eighth film together), and together they know how to break your heart.
 

The Creeps: Part II

THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL (A) -  A triumph of period filmmaking, this story of a 15-year-old girl in 1975 San Francisco sleeping with her mother's boyfriend is as authentic as feature films get.

The debut of 35-year-old Marielle Heller -- that's right, she wasn't born in 1975 -- is a marvel of a coming-of-age tale, but it greatly exceeds that genre classification. The mesmerizing Brit Bel Powley (that's right, she's not from the Bay Area) stars as the antsy teen Minnie, who yearns for the love, attention and touch of a man. She falls for Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard from TV's "True Blood"), the porn-stached beau of her free-spirited mother, Charlotte (the always interesting Kristen Wiig). 

Charlotte has a pal (Miranda Bailey) to drink and do lines of coke with, and Minnie also has a co-conspirator, the rascally Kimmie (the sharp Madeleine Waters, in her debut), and they all have their share of debauched adventures. Minnie and Kimmie navigate the transition between being girls (they jump and sing on Minnie's bed in front of an Iggy Pop poster) and young women (they have a romp in a bar pretending to be prostitutes).

In fact, Heller expertly conveys the feelings and emotions of both a wide-eyed 15-year-old girl and a jaded 35-year-old woman. Writing the script with source novelist Phoebe Gloeckner, Heller re-creates the look and feel of the 1970s without precious filmmaking fussiness or Hollywood conceit. From the opening moments, the story feels natural and real. Few films have captured post-Watergate urban America so well. This movie could have been made in 1975.

But the newcomer has an impeccable eye and ear for not only the era but also for the fundamental female experience. Her star, Powley, with her huge eyes, pouty lips and sexy curves (she's in her early 20s) embodies the adolescent bursting with hormones and pent-up affection. None of this feels like exploitation. The relationship between Minnie and Monroe has substance to it; it helps that this takes place during a more permissive time. But even so, Minnie doesn't seem like a victim, and nor is she a predatory vixen. Instead, Heller presents a compelling human drama, shaded with character studies and nuance. Wiig as Charlotte takes what could have been a thankless role and uses her physical grace to add dimension to the character. Christopher Meloni finds the right edge as the insufferably snooty Pascal, Charlotte's ex and the biological father to Minnie's snoopy little sister, Gretel.

This is anything but a downer; it has heart, snap and whimsy. Minnie is a budding cartoonist in the style of R. Crumb. While she sketches, she imagines communicating with Crumb's wife, Aline Kominsky, who appears in cartoon form (voiced by Susannah Schulman). (Heller keeps her footing even with animation and twinges of magical realism; it's a magic touch.) The comic-book setting recalls "Ghost World" (with its nubile teens Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson) and "American Splendor."

There is nothing like, in the summer of 2015, flashing back 40 years to a sloppy analog time when the world seemed like it was unraveling but anything still seemed possible. What a feat to capture that.